Tayloring ithttp://tayloringit.com
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 19:11:25 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1#DesignThinking #MOOC Scores On The Doors #DesignBizhttp://tayloringit.com/2015/03/designthinking-mooc-scores-on-the-doors-designbiz/
http://tayloringit.com/2015/03/designthinking-mooc-scores-on-the-doors-designbiz/#commentsTue, 31 Mar 2015 19:04:50 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4631Following my recent completion of the Design Thinking for Business Innovation, I was pleased to receive confirmation that I had scored enough points to qualify for a Coursera Certificate of Achievement.

What I was particularly interesting to see was the provision of various links to online evidence of my participation, course content etc along with a link to add the MOOC to my Linkedin profile.

Onwards…!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2015/03/designthinking-mooc-scores-on-the-doors-designbiz/feed/0Jumping on the bandwagon. My predictions for 2015…http://tayloringit.com/2014/12/jumping-on-the-bandwagon-my-predictions-for-2015/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/12/jumping-on-the-bandwagon-my-predictions-for-2015/#commentsFri, 19 Dec 2014 13:33:47 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4626As the end of a year approaches it’s time for the blogging fraternity to turn to the tried and tested ‘Top ‘this that and the other’ of 2014″ and ‘My predictions for 2015″ blog posts.

Far from me to turn down the opportunity to poke a little fun, here are my 2015 predictions / absolute cast iron guarantees

My Twitter stream will continue to be bombarded with Instagrammed photos of hot beverages and food. Fortunately I use Tweetbot which allows me to permanently block hashtags. Unfortunately hardly anybody tags their #instagram photos.

We will see a new word being made up within the L&D fraternity.

Certain bloggers will still rant on about ‘killer <insert any of the following, or choose your own> apps / platform / piece of hardware. Why can’t things just be ‘good’, ‘effective’, ‘worth having’?

Any podcast with ‘week’ or ‘weekly’ in the title is unlikely to ever be that, beyond its 5th episode.

I will unsuccessfully use facts, data and research against gut feelings and anecdotes.

2015 will be the year of mobile. Again.

Apple will release an ever-so-slight modification of a product. Tech bloggers will work themselves up into a crotch-twitching, salivating frenzy reporting on the ever-so-slight modification.

We’ll continue to have a L&D wide survey released approximately every 4 days

Many vendors will continue to ignore the native functionality of mobile devices whilst blowing their trumpets about how they are ‘leading’ in the mlearning world.

A ‘free to use’ service will change its Terms and Conditions. Users will form baying mobs and burning torches will be seen.

Certain ‘thought leaders’ in our field will use ever more bizarre diagrams to explore their concepts. It’s cos they’re clever see!

The word ‘learning’ will continue to be be used in place of ‘training / delivery of stuff’. Certain ‘thought leading’ organisations will exacerbate the issue.

I’ll see you in 2015…

… no doubt saying ‘I told you so‘

(the more eagle-eyed readers may have noticed, that bar the dates, this blog post is almost an exact copy of a 2012 post…. that’s cos nothing really changes)

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/12/jumping-on-the-bandwagon-my-predictions-for-2015/feed/2Using an #Amazon wishlist as a library catalogue #showyourwork #wolhttp://tayloringit.com/2014/11/using-an-amazon-wishlist-as-a-library-catalogue-showyourwork-wol/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/11/using-an-amazon-wishlist-as-a-library-catalogue-showyourwork-wol/#commentsSun, 30 Nov 2014 07:09:13 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4607Yesterday I received the following challenge from @JaneBozarth…

Has this inspired you to use Amazon wishlists as a resource/book list?

Are you using any platforms in a way other than perhaps was the original intention? If so, tell us more in the comments below.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/11/using-an-amazon-wishlist-as-a-library-catalogue-showyourwork-wol/feed/2#LH2L2 Scores On The Doorshttp://tayloringit.com/2014/11/lh2l2-scores-on-the-doors/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/11/lh2l2-scores-on-the-doors/#commentsTue, 11 Nov 2014 16:59:32 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4586Following my recent completion of the Learning How To Learn MOOC, I was pleased to receive confirmation that I had scored enough points to qualify for a Coursera Certificate of Achievement.

Admittedly, one of the biggest ‘takeaways’ from the MOOC was the ‘schoolboy error’ of not adding the weekly quiz deadlines to my calendar as missing a quiz deadline impacts upon your overall score (as you can see in the screenshot above)

D’oh!!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/11/lh2l2-scores-on-the-doors/feed/0Learning How To Learn #MOOC – Final project assignment #LH2L2http://tayloringit.com/2014/11/learning-how-to-learn-mooc-final-project-assignment-lh2l2/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/11/learning-how-to-learn-mooc-final-project-assignment-lh2l2/#commentsMon, 03 Nov 2014 21:42:51 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4581I’m in the latter stages of the ‘Learning How To Learn’ MOOC.

The final assignment requires us to submit a resource that covers three of the MOOC’s subject areas and explain how we intend to use that resource.

As I mention in the introduction to the video resource I have created (below), I have approached the project from a slightly different perspective than I think was the intention, as I didn’t just want to create a resource to help me learn better, but I wanted to create a resource to help out our internal and external facilitators design ‘solutions’ that would adopt some of the subject areas of the MOOC to help our employees extract more from our formal learning programmes.

From a personal perspective the MOOC has also confirmed and strengthened my resolve to challenge the misuse of the word ‘learning’ and has made it onto my “things that should be mandatory for all people development professionals” list. (more to follow…)

Whilst I appreciate that many people attend conferences to gain an insight into the ‘ethereal’ and strategic thinking of others, I’m a big fan of providing people with what I call Monday morning quick wins, ideas and activities that can be put into effect the Monday morning after a conference with no need for business cases, project charters, sign offs, or IT involvement.

In order to help achieve this I offered two challenges to the attendees.

By looking for opportunities to solve problems outside of the L&D bubble you’ll be helping to prove your worth to the wider business as well as ‘getting your foot in the door’ for future use of mobile resources.

For those of you who are thinking “Duh! That’s obvious”! You’re right it is! What are you doing in this area? Please let us know in the comments below.

If the above challenge has resonated in with you, I really hope that you’ll post a response below letting us know what resources you’ve identified (a link would be great) and for what type of business activity.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/09/challenge-two-learninglive-inspire-session-mlearning/feed/0It’s Back! – #Googlemedia #MOOChttp://tayloringit.com/2014/09/its-back-googlemedia-mooc/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/09/its-back-googlemedia-mooc/#commentsTue, 16 Sep 2014 05:33:35 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4539As some of you will have read in my previous posts, I undertook a MOOC entitled ‘Understanding Media By Understanding Google‘ earlier this year, which had the rare honour of being the only MOOC I’ve ever completed.

I’m pleased to see that it’s running again with some of the content updated to reflect recent changes in the world, including ‘the right to be forgotten’ law and ‘wearables’.

If you’re looking for a well constructed, interesting MOOC, you could do a lot worse than registering for this.

Whilst I appreciate that many people attend conferences to gain an insight into the ‘ethereal’, strategic thinking of others, I’m a big fan of providing people with I call ‘Monday morning quick wins’, ideas and activities that can be put into effect the Monday morning after a conference with no need for businesses cases, project charters, sign offs or IT involvement.

In order to help achieve this I offered two challenges to the attendees (which I’m replicating in this series of blog posts)

Challenge One

Think about the formal L&D programmes that are run in your organisation.

Identify, curate and introduce mobile friendly resources/activities that will help to support those formal programmes – simple!

Are there any apps available to support the programmes you’ve identified?
Any YouTube videos?
Blog posts?
LinkedIn / Google+ groups
Twitter accounts / lists
Podcasts?

…you get the idea…

Our employees/students/clients etc are already accessing the above types of resources for their own ends, it would be foolish of us not to tap into these habits for our own ends.

For those of you who are thinking “Duh, that’s obvious“, you’re right, it is! – What are you doing in this area, please tell us below in the comments.

If the above challenge has resonated in with you, I really hope that you’ll post a response in the comments below, letting us know what resources you’ve identified (a link would be great) and for what type of programme.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/09/challenge-one-learninglive-inspire-session-mlearning/feed/0#LearningLive Inspire session – Mobile Learninghttp://tayloringit.com/2014/09/learninglive-inspire-session-mobile-learning/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/09/learninglive-inspire-session-mobile-learning/#commentsFri, 12 Sep 2014 20:11:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4522Earlier this week I was fortunate to speak at the Learning Live conference in London.

My session was part of an ‘Inspire’ series that had been running throughout the 2-day event. Each speaker was asked to speak for 15 minutes on a small stage at the side of the exhibition/refreshment area during the various networking breaks that took place.

Here’s the description of my session

Many organisations see mobile learning as something new, something difficult, something expensive! Where do they start? How much will it cost? Is there an audience for this? These, and many other questions are often reasons to put off looking at mobile learning in greater depth.This Inspire session will answer all of the above questions whilst providing you with some ‘quick wins’ to enable you to go straight back to your organisation and start implementing some solutions.

During the session I conduced a simple exercise to re-calibrate people’s definitions around the (awful) terms ‘mobile learning’. I them laid down a couple of challenges for everybody to take away with them, which I assured them would lead to a ‘Monday morning ‘quick win”.

In order to help spread the love of the session I’m going to reproduce those exercises and challenges over the next few days and hope that you, Dear Reader, will respond via the comments section below.

Take a think back over the past 2 weeks and identify when you have used a mobile device to:

Solve a problem

Ask for help

Provide help

Connect with somebody

Communicate with somebody

Collaborate with somebody

Check something

Purchase something

…. you get the idea…. Please let us all know via the comments below

…and then….

take a think back over the past 2 weeks and identify when you have used a mobile device to:

Stay tuned for the next 2 posts in which I’ll share the challenges that I posed during the session….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/09/learninglive-inspire-session-mobile-learning/feed/28#GoogleMedia Scores On The Doorshttp://tayloringit.com/2014/07/googlemedia-scores-on-the-doors/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/07/googlemedia-scores-on-the-doors/#commentsFri, 18 Jul 2014 19:24:28 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4509Following my recent (surprising) completion of the ‘Understanding Media By Understanding Google‘ MOOC, I was pleased to receive confirmation that I had scored enough points to qualify for a Coursera Certificate of Achievement.

What I was particularly interesting to see was the provision of various links to online evidence of my participation, course content etc along with an ‘add to Linkedin’ button

which automatically added a link to my Linkedin profile, which you can see if you scroll down this page.

Wondering if it will help at all???

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/07/googlemedia-scores-on-the-doors/feed/0Why there was no ‘Week 5 & 6 recap of #GoogleMedia #MOOC’http://tayloringit.com/2014/07/why-there-was-no-week-5-6-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/07/why-there-was-no-week-5-6-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/#commentsSat, 12 Jul 2014 10:59:55 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4501Regular readers will know that some time ago I committed to blogging my way through the ‘Understanding Media by understanding Google’ MOOC as a way of trying to maintain my commitment to the MOOC (which I’ve been known to be pretty poor at the past).

For those people who were unable to access the books, a selection of other resources are published each week in order to ‘plug the gap’ of the books.

Here are my updated social bookmarks with all of the online suggested reading to date.

Random fact

Google’s ‘Content ID’ scans 250 years worth of YouTube footage EVERY DAY looking for copyright infringements.

Coursera/MOOC design consideration

As I mentioned last week, I’m not a fan of the weekly ‘quizzes’ as in my opinion they don’t really add any deep value to the course and only test short term recall, however I was pleased to see this in relation to the quizzes:

Synergies with L&D

As I’ve been reading the books and accessing the online resources I’ve made a number of notes and observations as to how I think there is a synergy / something to be learnt in the work that I do. I’ve listed a small number of the quotes below and was originally planning to to explain why I’ve made a note of them, but I’ve changed my mind…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-4-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/feed/0Week 3 recap of #GoogleMedia #MOOChttp://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-3-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-3-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/#commentsSun, 22 Jun 2014 18:59:14 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4448If you read my blog regularly you’ll know that I’ve committed to blogging my way through a MOOC I’ve undertaking entitled Understanding Media by Understanding Google. We’ve just come to the end of Week 3 so I thought it would be a logical time to post my reflections from the past week.

In order to stop these weekly posts from becoming a ramble, I’m going to try and stick to the following headings:

This weeks theme

Suggested reading

Random fact

Coursera/MOOC design observation

Synergies with L&D

This weeks theme

Google and Advertising

Suggested reading

Upon registering for the MOOC, participants were recommended to obtain a number of books on the subject of Google. These books were:

I only own one of those books ‘What Would Google Do’, so being somewhat strapped for cash, I purchased another 2 on eBay and decided to reserve the others from my local library……. for those of you who are on the edges of your seats wondering whether they have arrived or not…… still no sign of them!!

For those people who were unable to access the books, a selection of other resources are published each week in order to ‘plug the gap’ of the books. I’ve updated my social bookmarks with the reading and viewing from Week 3 in case you’d like to see them.

Random fact

Coursera/MOOC design consideration

As I mentioned last week, I’m not a fan of the weekly ‘quizzes’ as in my opinion they don’t really add any deep value to the course and only test short term recall, however I was pleased to see this in relation to the quizzes:

Coursera screenshot providing advice on how to check outside sources whilst within an assessment.

Synergies with L&D

In previous weeks I’ve made some notes and annotations alongside the recommended reading, however I have to admit defeat with this weeks subject area / reading. I find it hard to believe that there is nothing that L&D can’t take from the way that Google undertakes its advertising business, but i just haven’t seen it this week – perhaps MOOC fatigue is setting in???

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-3-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/feed/0Week 2 recap of #GoogleMedia #MOOChttp://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-2-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-2-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/#commentsTue, 10 Jun 2014 20:10:39 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4399If you read my blog regularly you’ll know that I’ve committed to blogging my way through a MOOC I’ve undertaking entitled Understanding Media by Understanding Google. We’ve just come to the end of Week 2 so I thought it would be a logical time to post my reflections from the past week. In order to stop these weekly posts from becoming a ramble, I’m going to try and stick to the following headings:

This weeks theme

Suggested reading

Random fact

Coursera/MOOC design observation

Synergies with L&D

This weeks theme

Google and Publishing

I’ve struggled to maintain interest as much this week as I did in Week 1. Is this the beginning of the end of my MOOC participation or simply indicative of my use of Google i.e. I use Google Search a LOT (week 1 subject area), whereas I rarely use Google News or Books.

Time will tell….

Suggested reading

Upon registering for the MOOC, participants were recommended to obtain a number of books on the subject of Google. These books were:

As mentioned in my Week 1 recap, I only own one of those books ‘What Would Google Do’, so being somewhat strapped for cash, I purchased another 2 on eBay and decided to reserve the others from my local library……. for those of you who are on the edges of your seats wondering whether they have arrived or not – they haven’t!!! (and people wonder why libraries are dying off!).

For those people who were unable to access the books, a selection of other resources are published each week in order to ‘plug the gap’ of the books. I’ve updated my social bookmarks in case you’d like to view them.

Random fact

129,864,880. The number of different, printed, bound books in the world as of late 2010 according to Google Books.

Coursera/MOOC design consideration

I’m continuing to use the Coursera app on my iPad and Nexus 5, and by and large Im enjoying using it, however the more I use it, the more I’m finding a few niggles such as:

Any URLs within the app will only open within the app window itself and not on the devices browser, making it impossible to share the link with anybody or annotate using a tool such as Diigo.

I’m still experiencing problems with the videos when played back in the app. Formative questions, URLs and pauses all seem to be non-existent in the app, however they are present in the desktop version of the video.

Whilst the weekly quizzes may act as some form of engagement activity, in my opinion they don’t really add any deep value to the course and only test short term memory.

The programme does have a feature and process for reporting issues with any of the content, which is good to see.

Synergies with L&D

As I’ve been reading the books and accessing the online resources I’ve made number of notes and observations as to how I think there is a synergy / something to be learnt in the work that I do. I’ve listed a small number of the quotes below and was originally planning to to explain why I’ve made a note of them, but I’ve changed my mind…

… instead I’ll let you make the connections for yourselves.

“To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?
I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable” Better Than Free

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/06/week-2-recap-of-googlemedia-mooc/feed/0Week 1 recap of #GoogleMedia #MOOChttp://tayloringit.com/2014/05/week-1-re/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/week-1-re/#commentsTue, 27 May 2014 12:11:03 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4346If you read my last post in this #GoogleMedia series, you’ll know that I’ve recently started a MOOC entitled Understanding Media by Understanding Google. We’ve just come to the end of Week 1 so I thought it would be a logical time to post my reflections from the past week. In order to stop these weekly posts from becoming a ramble, I’m going to try and stick to the following headings:

This weeks theme

Suggested reading

Random fact

Coursera/MOOC design observation

Synergies with L&D

This weeks theme

The Age of Google / Google and Search

Suggested reading

A small selection of the reccomended reading for the #GoogleMedia #MOOC

Upon registering for the MOOC, participants were recommended to obtain a number of books on the subject of Google. These books were:

I only own one of those books ‘What Would Google Do’, so being somewhat strapped for cash, I purchased another 2 on eBay and decided to reserve the others from my local library……. I’m still waiting…… (Expect a weekly update on this).

For those people who were unable to access the books, a selection of online resources were also provided to help ‘plug the gap’.

Random fact

In 1998 Google handled approx 10, 000 searches a day. Today, it handles that amount in approx 1/3rd of a second!

Coursera/MOOC design consideration

It was great to read this approach to the structure and availability of the resources,

Rather than releasing videos and related materials week by week, we will be posting them all as the class begins, so that you can proceed at the pace that works best for you

although the assignment are still released on a week-by-week basis, but I can live with that. Many of the videos had links to other resources embedded within them at various stages, which was useful in terms of being able to ‘jump out’ of the video at certain points, however several of the videos failed to have the link included, despite them being referenced.

The programme does have a feature and process for reporting ‘issues’ with any of the content, which is good to see.

The Coursera app works well both my iPad and Nexus 5 phone, in terms of being able to review the programme structure and videos (a big help when you have a 5 hour round commute) unfortunately the forums don’t seem to be optimised for mobile use.

Using the Coursera app to undertake the #GoogleMedia #MOOC on my iPad.

Synergies with L&D

As I’ve been reading the books and accessing the online resources I’ve made number of notes and observations as to how I think there is a synergy / something to be learnt in the work that I do. I’ve listed a small number of the quotes below and was originally planning to to explain why I’ve made a note of them, but I’ve changed my mind… … instead I’ll let you,Ã‚Â Dear Reader, makes the connections for yourselves.

“Unless old media companies want to fight their customers, try to deny their desire for new choices and new conveniences, pretend they can reclaim past glories, they have no alternative but to figure out how to ride the wave”Googled: An Excerpt From Ken Aluetta’s New Book

Why not leave your thoughts as to why I highlighted those specific quotes / references in the comments section below? Image source

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/week-1-re/feed/0Taking a stab at a #MOOC. Another one. Again! #GoogleMediahttp://tayloringit.com/2014/05/taking-a-stab-at-a-mooc-another-one-again-googlemedia/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/taking-a-stab-at-a-mooc-another-one-again-googlemedia/#commentsFri, 23 May 2014 19:18:24 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4326As you can perhaps deduce from the title, my MOOC participation/completion in the past has been somewhat chequered. I’ve signed up to approx 8 MOOCs and have completed…. erm …… None!

Donald Clark would say that its not the ‘drop out’ rate that is important but that we should focus on the ‘drop in rate’ and what I can glean from the MOOC whilst I’m ‘dropping in’ – and I’d agree with Don.

But.

Of all the MOOCs I have signed up for, (with one exception) I have barely got past the first activity of the first week before I have thrown the towel in as a result of:

Mind-crushingly boring intro videos (one of which was almost an hour in length!)

Outdated models/thinking

The expectation that I’ll be poring through tomes of academic text (I’m sure the edufolk love it though)

So with this track history under my belt, it was not without some trepidation that I signed up to the Understanding Media by Understanding Google MOOC facilitated by Owen Youngman (Northwestern University) within Coursera.

Here’s one particular aspect that attracted me.

the class features several lecture videos per week, each of which is between 8 and 15 minutes in length

As for the ‘will I fare any better in this MOOC than in my previous attempts‘ question, I’ve added a few motivators into the equation: Firstly, I’ve put my hand in my pocket for the first time and signed up for a ‘Statement of Accomplishment’.

Not that I’m the sort of person who is hung up on certificates and “bits of paper”, but I’m genuinely interested in how the process will work, how MOOCs may be monetised and to be honest I’m a Yorkshireman, so the thought of spending £30 on potentially ‘nothing’ is a keen motivator!

I’ve also been touting MOOCs around my organisation (admittedly without much success) so I thought it prudent to actually complete one. I’m using this blog post as a way of announcing to the L&D team what I’m doing in the hope that they ‘hold me to account’ (Yeah, yeah I’m aware of the whole ‘personal responsibility’ thing, but that ship sailed a long time ago when it comes to MOOCs)!

I’m also using this post as way of asking any fellow #GoogleMedia participants if they would like to be my MOOC ‘buddy’, perhaps meeting up once a week to discuss the previous week via Skype or a Google Hangout? I know that Bianca Woods has had some success with this approach in the past and Sam and Martin from MOOC Pro also advocate this approach.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/taking-a-stab-at-a-mooc-another-one-again-googlemedia/feed/5My day out at #Employed14http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/my-day-out-at-employed14/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/my-day-out-at-employed14/#commentsThu, 15 May 2014 16:47:55 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4319I recently attended Employ:ed 14, here’s the official blurb from their Eventbrite page

EMPLOY:ED 2014 is the only summit globally this year looking exclusively at how education technology is revolutionising learning and recruitment options for employers.

Based at the Google Campus in London, this summit covers:

The Hottest Trends

The most innnovative solutions

The Latest Products

The Background:

Over the last three years, 15 million learners worldwide have taken up Massive Open Online Courses delivered by universities including Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

In schools across the world flipped classrooms have changed the way that educators and learners experience formal tuition.

Data has also transformed the ways in which individual learners can be supported with wholly adaptable platforms being developed with artificial intelligence and fully 360 technology solutions already being tested in the market.

EMPLOY:ED 2014

This summit is an opportunity for employers to benefit from the experience of Educators who have switched to outcomes-focused ICT procurement decisions and learn from today’s education technology companies who are increasingly creating products underpinned by proven pedagogical practices.

Who Should Attend?

Human resources Directors

Talent Managers

Talent Acquisition

Resourcing Specialists

Digitial Marketing Managers

Learning and Development Specialists

EMPLOY:ED 2014 is themed around fun, learning and networking:

We’ve kept the formal sitting and listening bit to a minimum with some great speakers from education as well as employers feeding back their warts and all experiences of embracing technology. This is combined with three unconference areas which will be supplier free and include a chance for you to network around emerging themes.

At the beginning of the event a Google employee explained to us what ‘Campus London’ (apparently we shouldn’t call it Google Campus) was, what it does and doesn’t do and how it does it. I happened to be sat next to Laura Overton and leaned over to say that it appeared that Campus London and in particular Google had developed the almost perfect L&D model. Nothing Earth shatteringly new, innovative or difficult – the difference being they were actually doing it!

If you ever get the opportunity to visit Campus London, please take it and whilst you’re there get a Googler to explain how they help, support and develop the start-ups that use Campus London.

Regular readers will know that I’m not a fan of exhaustive, post event blogging but prefer to blog some ‘action points’ that I can go away and follow up on once I return to work.

Review major MOOC platforms for any MOOCs that relate to Financial services/financial modelling/economics etc

Speak to HR in relation to how they use technology within their recruitment process and mention the asynchronous video interviews that were mentioned by Proversity LINK

Suggest that Towards Maturity table the idea of a ‘Fundamentals of Banking’ MOOC to the Financial Services benchmark group.

I’m not a huge fan of ‘live tweeting’ particularly when it’s a blow-by-blow account of what the speaker is saying, so I was pleased to see that there were no manic tweeters in the audience, which in my opinion, made for a much more considered backchannel, some of which you can see in the Storify below.

All in all, a very worthwhile day from bumping into Boris Johnson and hearing him talk about MOOCs to hearing how Google are using Campus London to incubate UK talent to discovering more opportunities to further develop my practice and that of my employer.

[&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”//storify.com/craigtaylor74/employ-ed-2014″ target=”_blank”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;View the story “Employ:ed 2014″ on Storify&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;]

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/my-day-out-at-employed14/feed/0As a sidenote…http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/as-a-sidenote/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/as-a-sidenote/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 18:43:58 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4311Regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve been using the Livefyre comments system for some years now.

They’ve recently announced a new addition to their offering in the form of ‘sidenotes’.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/05/as-a-sidenote/feed/1Let the numbers do the talking…http://tayloringit.com/2014/04/let-the-numbers-do-the-talking/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/04/let-the-numbers-do-the-talking/#commentsFri, 25 Apr 2014 14:20:00 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4280Take a look through most of the current thinking around L&D and there a whole range of ideas, thoughts, practices, approaches – whatever you want to call them – that are intended to enhance the value that you are adding to your organisation.

The problem with blindly following many of these recommendations is that they often fail to acknowledge the resistance that many workplace practitioners will face from others within their organisation.

The purpose of this blog post is to provide you with a range of ideas, research, suggestions etc that I have found useful in helping to underpin my rationale for ‘acting differently’.

I’ve found that by showing the research, figures, hard data etc that I’ve received less ‘push back’ than previously from stakeholders – I’ve even seen / heard of examples of those same stakeholders repeat the data/research to others!

As regular readers will know, in a previous organisation I started to implement a ‘campaign, not course’ approach towards compliance training. I had *many* conversations with various stakeholders to help convince them of this approach, but by far the most powerful argument was showing them the amount of (approximate) time that employees spent undertaking compliance training.

The figures below are born out a number of ‘approximates’

i.e. Approximately 1200 employees
Approximately 45 minutes per module.

Here’s one lady who thought and acted differently – just look at the attention that her approach captures.

Did her approach mean that some of the important content was lost?

Possibly.

However, would I have:

taken my earphones out..

looked up from by book/phone/tablet..

.. to have listened to and watched the brief?

Absolutely!!

What do you think?

Worth doing something that little bit different to capture people’s attention when it comes to compliance training?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/04/a-novel-approach-to-compliance-briefings/feed/0‘Forgetting’ researchhttp://tayloringit.com/2014/03/forgetting-research/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/03/forgetting-research/#commentsSat, 22 Mar 2014 15:05:09 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4269Take a look through most of the current thinking around L&D and there a whole range of ideas, thoughts, practices, approaches – whatever you want to call them – that are intended to enhance the value that you are adding to your organisation.

The problem with blindly following many of these recommendations is that they often fail to acknowledge the resistance that many workplace practitioners will face from others within their organisation (I know, I’ve been there).

The purpose of this blog post is to provide you with a range of ideas, research, suggestions etc that I have found useful in helping to underpin my rationale for ‘acting differently’.

I’ve found that by showing the research, figures, hard data etc that I’ve received less resistance from stakeholders – I’ve even seen / heard of examples of those same stakeholders repeating the data/research to others!

I’ve previously been asked to designed a ‘sheep dip’ sales programme. There was no guarantee that any sales staff would actually sell the product immediately after the ‘sheep dip’ programme. I used Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve research to show the futility of relying on a sheep dip programme as well as related research around spaced repetition to help shift people’s (by people, I mean project stakeholders) perceptions as to how the programme should be delivered?

I won’t regale Ebbinghaus’s research as it’s been done a gazillion times by others, but here’s a few articles you may find of use in the area of the Forgetting Curve, spaced learning, spaced repetition etc

You may also find it useful to bookmark my Social Bookmarks on this subject as I’m likely to add to this list beyond this blog post being published.

BUT….

Despite my use of the Ebbinghaus research/data being successful in convincing my stakeholders to adopt a non sheep-dipping approach it was interesting to read this blog post from Dr Will Thalheimer in which he challenges the sweeping generalisation around ‘forgetting’.

Make sure that you explore the various links etc within Will’s post…. you may be surprised (particularly, if like me, you have touted Ebbinghaus’ research before)

Have you successfully used the subject of ‘forgetting’ in any of your work?

How did you get on?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/03/forgetting-research/feed/0My review of the #Encore #mlearning apphttp://tayloringit.com/2014/03/my-review-of-the-encore-mlearning-app/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/03/my-review-of-the-encore-mlearning-app/#commentsMon, 03 Mar 2014 17:23:31 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4245I recently attended this Kineo event. I had originally intended to produce a Storify from this event, but there were several different event hashtags in use throughout the day, so I rapidly gave up on the idea – sure I could’ve manually added the tweets but you know how it is…

Instead, over the next few posts I’d like to share with you a few tools and platforms that @DonaldClark referred to during his session, starting off with ‘Encore’.

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of anything that can be done minimise the forgetting curve and automate the process of ‘forcing’ the act of recall around a subject so I was pleased to see Donald highlight ‘Encore‘.

In a nutshell, it’s a Moodle plugin that can be used to synchronise with a free app. The plugin is configured with certain content reminders / frequency etc and then pushes those to the app allowing a steady drip-drip-drip of ‘tasks’ directly to the employees / students mobile device.

Encore showing an alert on an iPhone

The FREE demo involves undertaking a SCORM piece of eLearning with a Moodle, completing a ‘self assessment’ using Moodle’s inbuilt assessment tool which then unlocks the ‘Encore’ plugin. At this stage you can select to receive the automated ‘tasks’ by email or the Encore app (see below)

‘Tasks’ showing within the Encore app

As sound as the principle is, there are a few areas where I feel some improvement could be made. Having spoken to Learning Pool (the company behind the app) they were very vocal about their desire to receive feedback so I going to speak to them at the end of the 3-week ‘demo’ that is available and relay this feedback onto them.

Firstly (and this is not a criticism, just an observation) but if you’re not using Moodle (or possibly Totara?) then this obviously isn’t for you! Hopefully other LMS/VLE providers will latch onto the idea though??

Despite this being a Moodle extension it’s not freely available. Having spoken to Learning Pool they said that even if your Moodle (possibly Totara?) isn’t supplied by them that that the Encore extension could probably be purchased from them.

The Encore app is only available on iOS and Android, with Windows on the roadmap but a definite ‘No’ to Blackberries (possibly a stumbling block for corporates who currently use BB?

Whilst the end user has the option of receiving the reminders via email or the app for me this still relies on (assuming that the organisation is wishing to tap into the mobility of the employee / student) the end user having a smartphone. I’d like to see the option of using SMS as a delivery channel. Sure, some of the more media rich activities may not be accessible to feature phone users, but as I see it, at present, none of it is accessible to feature phone users.

Some of the activities I undertook in the trial period were just tests of short term memory (see below), which for me, weren’t the best examples of spaced activation of learning, however I think with some thought around reflective questions (possibly with the option for ‘free text’ responses) and short videos there could be a real opportunity for this app to serve as a ‘trigger’ for deeper thought and processing.

An example of a ‘task’ within the Encore app

All in all, I think this is a great step forward in terms of demonstrating that mobile learning can be and is so much more than responsive ‘click next’ elearning.

Why not get involved with the FREE trial and let Learning Pool have your feedback?

What do you think? Does this fill a critical gap in most corporate L&D activities?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/03/my-review-of-the-encore-mlearning-app/feed/5Research? Science? or something more wooly?http://tayloringit.com/2014/02/research-science-or-something-more-wooly/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/02/research-science-or-something-more-wooly/#commentsWed, 19 Feb 2014 18:43:48 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4228Although I’ve been publishing video for some time now, both for myself personally and for Orgs I’ve been working in, it’s always been somewhat ‘quick and dirty’ using phones, flip cams, webcams etc.

My current employer however, is looking into the possibility of purchasing some higher end equipment, so I’ve been doing my research not only into the equipment itself but also the underpinning knowledge and skillset required.

That’s why I was quite excited to see this tweet appear in my timeline.

I attempted to leave a comment against the post but kept getting an error message whenever I submitted it. Not one to be put off I called Video Arts to let them know their site was playing up (‘cos that’s the kinda guy I am) and was told that they would fix it.

Imagine my surprise to find that ‘fixing it’ appears to mean ‘removing the comments functionality against all posts’!

It often feels like a no-brainer that video is a more effective way to share learning; everyone loves watching telly right? The billions of daily hits on YouTube certainly suggest that people enjoy watching videos, but there’s also plenty of science behind our assertion that video creates longer lasting learning.

So for all our clients who ask us “what’s the research that says video is the most effective tool for learning”, here’s a list of useful references….(be warned; our list gets more sciencey towards the end)

50% of Smartphone users watch video on their mobile device – the Educational Marketing Group

Learners remember 10% of what they read (text), 20% of what they hear (lectures), 30% of what they see (images), 50% of what they see and hear (demonstrations, video), 70% of what they say themselves (speaking, giving lectures) and 90% of what they do (practice) – Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning

A comScore press release states that when professionally-produced video and user-generated video were used in conjunction for a comScore study, lift in share of choice was 35.3% for the featured product and 28% for the brand’s total line. Alone, professionally-produced video resulted in 24.7% and 16% respectively, and user-generated video returned 18.7% and 10% – comScore

Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research says a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words – invodo

Video appears in 70% of the top 100 search listings – KISSmetrics

Videos are 53 times more likely than text pages to show up on the first page of search results – GIGAmon

In a Forbes study, it was found that three-quarters (75%) of executives surveyed said they watch work-related videos on business-related websites at least weekly; more than half (52%) watch work-related videos on YouTube at least weekly – Forbes

More than half of senior executives share videos with colleagues at least weekly, and receive work-related videos as often – Forbes.

Regularly posting videos helped the company’s website receive 200% to 300% more monthly unique visitors and a 100% longer average time-on-site spent per visitor. The average time spent on pages with videos was 3 minutes compared to 1 minute and 30 seconds averaged on pages without video – marketing sherpa

29.9% of people say they would watch more online video content if the quality of content were higher and 26.4% would watch more if their access were more flexible (i.e., the ability to watch anywhere, anytime, from any device) – eConsultancy

Students asked about video-instruction universally express that video reinforces their learning, makes them feel visually stimulated, and holds their attention better than text – Cofield, J. L. (2002) An Assessment of Streaming Video in Web-based Instruction

The use of video has been deemed more effective for student retention than the use of text in problem-based instruction – Choi and Johnson

The multiple symbol system of video enhances understanding of complex concepts and supports the acquisition of new concepts among learners with limited prior knowledge – Salomon, G. (1994). Interaction of media, cognition, and learning. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Information obtained visually is more memorable, and the simultaneous processing of both auditory and visual information increases learner comprehension and retention – Baggett, P. (1984). Role of temporal overlap of visual and auditory material in forming dual media associations. Journal of Educational Psychology

Instructors observe that students ask questions that are more specific and engaged in classroom discussion – Franciszkowicz, M. (2008). Video-Based Additional Instruction. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology

My response(which I’m still very happy to post against the original site, just as soon as Video Arts enable comments)

Hmmmm,

The *initially* impressive list of 21 items seems to largely fall down once you start to read it!

Very, very few of the 21 bullet points actually provide any evidence that video is the most ‘effective’ tool for learning.

Admittedly, there are some references to what appears to be research towards the end of the list, but the author hasn’t actually bothered to extrapolate the actual evidence from the data.

Let me clear here. I am not at all ‘anti video’, but when a blog posts tells me it’s going to provide me with some ‘research’, I expect it to do that – not just cite a long list of examples that ‘video is popular’ – so is nicotine but it doesn’t mean that it’s effective for learning!!!

Of course the reliability of the ‘somebody else‘ is always an area of risk, which is why over the past year or two I have been using www.checkatrade.com to check up on any potential tradesmen. Here’s the principle behind the site…

More recently I’ve been thinking about how this could work from a vendors perspective.

Let’s be honest I’m sure many of us have had experiences with vendors that were perhaps less than positive – I know I have. The thing is, that even if you provide that feedback to them, the chances of it ever appearing on their websites testimonial page are, well…. slim!

Regulars Twitter followers will know the fun and games I’ve had since October of last year with my daily Peacehaven – London commutes to undertake a 6 month contract.

Since then I’ve picked up the book ‘Remote – Office Not Required’ and have been (rather ironically) dipping in and out of it on my commutes into London.

Over the next few posts I plan to share with you some elements of the book, if you simply can’t wait, you can find it here. (Amazon UK store)

Gotta dash….. Train to catch… <sigh>

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/01/book-review-remote-office-not-required/feed/0What’s in a name? – Your Help Needed!http://tayloringit.com/2014/01/whats-in-a-name-your-help-needed/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/01/whats-in-a-name-your-help-needed/#commentsTue, 21 Jan 2014 08:00:02 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4204I’m looking for (don’t laugh) a name for an LMS that I am in the process of delivering for the organisation I am contracting with.

Early suggestions have all revolved around suggesting that the LMS is the ‘centre’ or ‘hub’ of the organisations or individuals ‘learning’ – anybody who knows me will know that I’m keen to steer away from creating this perception around the LMS.

Early thoughts are:

Hal (suggested by Mark Aberdour, with the modification that it sings ‘Daisy, Daisy’ when you log out of it.

So over to you folks… can you think of any (serious) names that I could propose for their new LMS?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2014/01/whats-in-a-name-your-help-needed/feed/7Overthinking Slidesharehttp://tayloringit.com/2014/01/overthinking-slideshare/
http://tayloringit.com/2014/01/overthinking-slideshare/#commentsWed, 15 Jan 2014 17:27:37 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4193It seems to be that time of the year when every platform provider under the Sun is emailing me to tell me about my 2013 statistics

How many views my slides have had

How long people watched my videos for

How many bowel movements I’ve made

How many tweets I’ve sent etc

I was reading my Slideshare stats earlier today when I noticed that my number of slides per upload was much higher than the average Slideshare upload!

GASP!

I then noticed that my average number of words per slide was significantly lower than the average \

PHEW!

I guess the Lessig method I use for most of my presentations means that I’m using more slides to tell my story, but with fewer words. Perhaps I’m also overthinking this and need to get out more…

Do you use Slideshare?

What did your annual stats look like?

If you’d like to discuss how I can help you enhance your and your teams slide-based presentations, please get in touch.

If the answer to either of the above questions is ‘Yes’, then read on…

As many of you will know I’ve recently started working on a 6 month contract with an investment bank in the City of London, which means I’ve reluctantly joined the ‘not so exclusive’ commuting club!

Commuting has it’s downsides:

Long days

Not seeing my kids Mon-Friday (they’re in bed when I leave / get home)

Having to pay a small fortune for the joy of being transported from A to B and back again via dirty, draughty, poorly maintained and very often delayed trains.

That’s why I was very pleased to discover an online service called DelayRepaySniper. Their site has been recently updated to a rather nice responsive design, thus making it far easier to use the site from a mobile device, which let’s face it, is what you’re likely to have available during a delayed train journey! (Train Operating Companies (TOC) take note in terms of your Delay Repay online forms!)

iPhone view of notifications page

The website allows you to input a number of journeys i.e.

Newhaven Town – London Victoria

London Victoria – Newhaven Town

and the site will then email you every 24 hours to let you know of any delays that have occurred on that route. (think of it as a ‘nudging’ reminder)

iPad/desktop view of notifications

You can then either make the claim yourself via the Delay Repay system of your TOC or DelayRepaySniper, for an additional fee, can process the claim on your behalf.

There’s obviously a lot more to it that that and I’d encourage you to take a close look at the site to see if this could be of use to you too.

iPad/desktop view of site

So how could this be used to get your ‘foot in the door’ with mobile learning?

Let’s be honest, people would rather have their hard earned salary in their pockets than in the pockets of a service provider who has failed to meet their service level agreements! Why not research this more closely, discuss and demo it to your work colleagues (on your smartphone / tablet) and if people within your organisation would benefit, then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at the site and consider whether you might want to direct your colleagues towards them.

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/12/get-your-foot-in-the-door-delay-repay/feed/2An award entry – with a differencehttp://tayloringit.com/2013/12/an-award-entry-with-a-difference/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/12/an-award-entry-with-a-difference/#commentsMon, 02 Dec 2013 19:23:13 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4174Over the Summer of 2013 I submitted an entry into the LPIs annual Learning Awards in the Learning Professional of The Year category.

I know that’s somewhat narcissistic of me but it was the only category I felt I could provide actual evidence for at the point I wrote and submitted the entry. All the other categories would have, I felt, required me to provide evidence, examples etc that I no longer had access to (I did contact my ex-manager on several occasions, but have yet to to receive a reply……)

I wanted to submit an entry that caught the judges attention, so I used iBooks Author to create an interactive entry using text, image carousels and embedded video. I also provided a PDF version for those without an iPad.

Screenshot of the cover of my iBook submission

I was short listed as a category finalist and presented to the judging panel in November 2013.

I was keen to pitch my entry not just against the Learning and Performance Institutes and my own ‘criteria’ but also against what many of you considered to be indicative of a modern and effective L&D professional.

I’m prepping my @YourLPI awards pitch Can you help me? What 3 behaviours/characteristics/attitudes etc should a modern L&D pro demonstrate?

What words, behaviours, characteristics etc do you believe are missing from this Wordle?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/12/an-award-entry-with-a-difference/feed/0Great feedback – Great progress!http://tayloringit.com/2013/11/great-feedback-great-progress/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/11/great-feedback-great-progress/#commentsSun, 03 Nov 2013 12:38:00 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4146Several weeks ago I had the good fortune of being invited by Nick Lee to facilitate a couple of CPD sessions for members of University Hospital Southampton’s L&D team and a number of ‘leads’ and SMEs from around the organisation.

We agreed upon a session that would challenge the attendees perception as to what ‘elearning’ was, with a focus on achieving the realisation that it could be (and is) so much more than ‘self paced, click next’ modules.

The session involved a number of activities including conversation, debate, self-directed research and modelling of good practice with me using a range of technologies within the physical classroom environment.

As always with these sorts of sessions, they concluded with a general sense of positivity and implied ‘actions’ that people would take away, however as an external facilitator it’s often difficult to ever get a sense of whether your session had any real impact on people or whether they were just being polite.

That uncertainty is why I was incredibly chuffed to see this series of tweets from Nick Lee appear just a few days after the sessions took place.

I received the best email ever today – literally can’t describe how happy I was to see it (details in next tweet)

If you’re interested in me helping you to also trigger a change of thinking within your organisation then why not get in touch.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/11/great-feedback-great-progress/feed/0Get your foot in the door – Salary Calculatorhttp://tayloringit.com/2013/10/get-your-foot-in-the-door-salary-calculator/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/10/get-your-foot-in-the-door-salary-calculator/#commentsFri, 04 Oct 2013 07:50:56 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4133As many of you will know I’ve been job hunting over the past few months as a result of losing my job in mid-July. There are many challenges with job hunting one of which is figuring out what each salary will actually provide in terms of ‘take home’ pay.

That’s why I was very pleased to discover the app below. It allows you to enter a monetary figure, choose whether it’s an annual, monthly, daily or even hourly figure and then provides you with a ‘take home’ figure taking into account the usual deductibles, you can even input any pension % deductible and it will take that into account.

We can dream eh?

If you suspect that people within your organisation would find this of benefit then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your colleagues towards them.

Android app – £FREE (I haven’t used this app myself, but its features very closely resemble the iOS app I use)

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/10/get-your-foot-in-the-door-salary-calculator/feed/6From Compliance Course to Campaign Part 4 – The Campaign!http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-4-the-campaign/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-4-the-campaign/#commentsWed, 25 Sep 2013 10:36:10 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4111If you haven’t read this series to date it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set the context for this post…

At the end of my last post, I said the following

Keep on reading this series of posts to discover what happened after we’d received the proposals and what I’m calling the ‘end of the beginning‘

What I didn’t realise at the time was that my employment would end with that organisation prior to the project completion. To that end I’ll be unable to continue blogging about the status of the campaign, however what I am able to do is provide you with a glimpse into the ‘proof of concept’ that I delivered to internal stakeholders. I’m hopeful that even without seeing the final campaign, there will be something in the movie below that will inspire you towards making a change in the way that you design and deliver your compliance training. (you only need to watch between 43:43 and 54:28 to get a grasp of the campaign element)

If you’d like me to speak at your next event or discuss how I may be able to work together to bring about a fundamental change in the way your organisation delivers its mandatory training, then please get in touch.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-4-the-campaign/feed/1My review of #LearningLive 2013 Day 2http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/my-review-of-learninglive-2013-day-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/my-review-of-learninglive-2013-day-2/#commentsThu, 12 Sep 2013 14:10:10 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4086As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m participating in Learning Live 2013. Whilst I was directly involved as a speaker on Day 2, I also attended as a participant throughout the 2 day event.

Relationship and collaboration are crucial for today’s top-functioning organisations. The ability to network and build networks is critical for organisational performance. More than that, the leveraging of those networks is a massively unexploited competitive advantage. With 90% of learning coming from relational and experiential sources, the power of a network is clear. What organisations struggle with is creating a culture of connecting and networking that facilitates greater learning. Who knows what and who knows who are just two simple metrics that are rarely measured. Yet networking capability is both coachable and measurable, creating a much more collaborative, sharing and connected culture that positively impacts the bottom line.

Mapping out networking capability for employees – spotting the best networkers

The role of likeability and why it’s more important than technical competence

6 corporate strategies for building an internal network at any level.

My key content take-away

Rob was a very fun, engaging and informed speaker, however I was somewhat disappointed in the session content as I was unable to see where any of the above ‘likely takeaways’ came out during the session. Now I know that the word ‘likely’ is contained there, but I’d like to think that if the above session outline is being used to attract people to the session (as it did me) then it would explicitly cover those items.

I was under the impression that this session was going to be about how to ‘Building a Networked Orientated Workplace’ however it seemed to be more about personal networking skills as opposed to how to build an internal network. Don’t get me wrong, there was a section towards the end of the session ‘3 phases for building a networked orientated workplace‘ that touched on the subject, but I’d expected something far more focussed.

Session: ‘Building a Business Driven Collaborative Learning Culture’

Presented by Ron Edwards

Like many organisations, QA has a distributed workforce with a desire to keep staff informed, engaged and continuously learning how to best meet customer needs with new products and better services. QA chose a mix of formal learning reinforced by social media based learning to improve Sales education efficiency while increasing sharing of best practices. This approach was recently recognised with an LPI Gold Award for Social Media Programme of the Year and has resulted in an increase in new business wins by 17%.

This session will explore:

Business drivers behind adopting a collaborative learning approach

Success factors in planning, launch and engagement

Getting the mix of face to face, virtual, elearning and social media learning right

How a more collaborative learning culture is emerging

Measurement and business results

What’s next in terms of refreshing the approach and increasing engagement

Thoughts on gamification as a way to increase valuable contributions

Delegates will learn:

Six principles of effective use of social media to gain business results

Tricks of the trade for successful online community launches

The value of video sharing

Gamification challenges and opportunities

My key content take-away

QA utilised the platform that they already had in place for their clients. Whilst I can understand the rationale for this, I’ve yet to see a single platform that can match the efficacy of using multiple ‘best of breed’ platforms.

Think, plan and think again about your content architecture. How can we group or information, do we even need to group information if we ‘tag’ it well enough, provide a good search functionality and allow related results (as Amazon does)

Their story about distributing Flip cams to their workforce reminded me of the BT Dare2Share story – it’s a oldie but a goodie!

Compliance Training – From Course to Campaign!

Presented by me!!!

Compliance training is often seen by many L&D practitioners as a ‘thorn in their side’; a necessary evil that despite their best efforts, remains low-down on most learners list of things to concern themselves about. If this applies to you and/or your organisation and you’d like to ﬁnd out how to take a signiﬁcant step change in the delivery of your compliance training, then this session is for you!
Craig Taylor will guide you through his journey in turning compliance training from a selection of stand-alone courses to a series of ongoing campaigns. He’ll share his background thinking, hints and tips to obtain that critical ‘buy in’ from stakeholders and the research to back up his campaign approach along with those all important ‘lessons learnt’; AKA the bits that Craig got wrong!

Why the move from course to campaign?
How to obtain that all important ‘buy in’ from stakeholders
How to ask for what you want from external agencies.
Why you might consider a campaign for a campaign.
Share Craig’s lessons learnt

That’s right folks, I was facilitating my session at the end of Day 2 which revolved around the work I had done in my previous organisation to move compliance training away from ‘stand alone’ pieces of content to an ongoing 2/7 series of campaigns, you can read some of my posts on the subject here

Did you participate?

What did you take away from the day / each session?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/my-review-of-learninglive-2013-day-2/feed/3My review of #LearningLive 2013 Day 1http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/learninglive-day-1/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/learninglive-day-1/#commentsWed, 11 Sep 2013 05:43:27 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4049As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m participating in Learning Live 2013. Whilst I was directly involved as a speaker on Day 2, I also attended as a participant throughout the 2 day event.

Here are my key takeaways from Day 1

Moving from L&D to Performance Consulting

Presented by Nigel Harrison

Nigel will share his experience of what is need to successfully adopt Performance Consulting in your organisation.
Nigel looks at the inherent pay-offs in our organisations for doing things the way we always have and the power of the “conspiracy of convenience”.
After a brief re-cap on “What is the performance consulting approach?” Nigel will give two examples of:
doing it the old way
doing it the new way
He will share a blue print for turning some of your learning professional into performance consultants:
A common consulting process
The skills they will need to develop
The organisational obstacles the will encounter
Finally he will investigate how to build the influence and credibility of your team and countering internal power and manipulation. Nigel will also share extracts from his new book “How to deal with power and influence by Performance Consulting”.

My key content take-away

Don’t take orders. The ‘order’ is a clue that there is an underlying ‘need’ – ask questions to identify that need.

Step 1 – The contract (repeat back EXACTLY what they say to you)
Step 2 – Who is involved?
Step 3 – What are they doing now?
Step 4 – What do you want them to do?
Step 5 – What is the value of the gap? (Talk in facts, figures, data, KPIs etc about what the ‘gap’ is ‘costing’ them / the business)
Step 6 – ID causes and potential solutions. (A single solution rarely, if ever works)
Step 7 – Action plan

Draw a picture/diagram whilst talking with the client, help them/you to see what the problem is / isn’t.

Storytelling – Unlocking potential, listening to voices that matter

Presented by Fiona Quigley & Dr Maureen Murphy

This session will draw on a number of recent case studies of how we created digital stories that capture healthcare experiences, oral histories and workplace insights. We will look at what makes a good story, the impact stories can have and address some of the barriers we had to overcome – including people’s reluctance to tell stories and the technical process of gathering, recording and editing the stories.
The components of a good story
Different ways in which you can capture stories
How to build strategies to address barriers to designing and capturing stories
How to integrate stories in different parts of your organisation for workplace performance improvement.

My key content take-away

Stories exist all around us everyday. We may not often recognise that they are.

Storytelling is being done very well at the moment by marketing. As I’ve said before L&D can learnt a lot from marketing, perhaps storytelling is something else that we can learn from them.

Build trust with the storyteller by not tampering with their story.

Are you telling a story or a narrative?

‘Story arcs’ allow you to knit ‘stand alone’ stories into an overall story.

Very few people can tell an effective story ‘first time’. Consider providing structured questions to the person telling the story.

Did you participate?

What did you take away from the day / each session?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/learninglive-day-1/feed/3The Ones That Got Away – spaced learninghttp://tayloringit.com/2013/09/the-ones-that-got-away-spaced-learning/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/09/the-ones-that-got-away-spaced-learning/#commentsSat, 07 Sep 2013 18:24:32 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=4025As I mentioned in this previous post, I’m writing a series of posts that lift the lid on some of my plans and ideas that either never saw the light of day or (as in this post) never fully developed.

One of my plans in my previous organisations had been to implement the research that I’d read about ‘spaced learning‘, in particular using it to ‘reactivate’ key learning points thus building that all important, but often overlooked element of reflection into the programme.

At the beginning of 2013 my previous organisation launched a new product which would have an impact on both sales and ‘service’ staff. I was tasked to put together a resource to aid people within a service role. The overall approach combined:

The slight spanner in the works was that whilst the overall programme wasn’t designed as a knowledge transfer piece but as a ‘behaviour reinforcing‘ piece, (the behaviour being ‘use the performance support tool that you have at your fingertips’ as opposed to relying on memory and/or gut feeling), the fact that they were in a ‘service’ role and not a sales role meant there was the potential for days, weeks even months to pass between them undertaking the behaviour reinforcing programme and taking a call/email from somebody in relation to the product.

Here’s where I thought the practice of spaced repetition of the key points could be of use.

Here’s what I did:

Upon successful completion of the online programme individuals details were loaded into the database of Retenda (the tool I decided to use).

The following Monday, each newly added individual started to receive an automated cycle of emails which lasted a month that brought the key learning points bubbling to the surface (we also had the option to send these reminders via SMS or postcard) Sometimes they would be asked to reflect on a question, other times they’d be ‘nudged’ to discuss the content of the email with a colleague who had completed the programme or to reflect upon how they’d react to a certain situation. None of the questions required any formal response back to L&D, in fact we explicitly asked for people not to do so – I didn’t want this to be an onerous task or be seen as another box-ticking exercise. Each email included a link that linked the individual to the relevant section within the performance support tool.

The final email in Wk 4 contained a Surveymonkey link to seek feedback on the spaced reminder programme.

As is usually the case the number of people who undertook the survey compared to the number of people who received the spaced reminders was woefully small, so I’m reluctant to jump to any conclusions however there were a number of people who said that whilst they understood and agreed with the general principle they felt that the method of delivery (email) meant that it was ignored or ‘lost’ within their other emails.

What would I have done differently in this project?

Based on the limited feedback, I would:

Limit the number of emails that were sent over the 4 week period which would mean investigating which of the key learning points we could remove (this sense check had already occurred, so that would have been a tough call)

or

Keep the same amount of reminders but extend them over a longer period perhaps 5 or 6 weeks.

However none of the above would have necessarily mitigated the issue of it being ‘another email‘ in their inbox.

I’d been planning to use spaced learning within a leadership programme that my organisation was delivering with a view to tweaking the delivery method by utilising text messaging to their mobile devices in order to mitigate the ‘email overload’ issue.

You may notice that I said

“I’d *been* plannng”

Because I left the organisation prior to being able to take this next important step in fine-tuning the delivery of spaced learning reminders.

Oh well… there’s always next time…

If you’d like to discuss how I can help you integrate spaced learning into your organisation then please get in touch

Let’s be honest, when your conference attendees have a number of concurrent sessions to select from, other than previous experience/recommendations of the facilitator, all they’ve got to go in is the session overview on the conference website. Why not invite each speaker (and potential attendees) to participate in a 10 minute online session in which they pitch their session and take part in a Q&A. It may also give the potential attendees an insight into the presentation skills of the speaker (AKA are they going to rattle off a load of bullet points at me?)

I’ve not yet seen this taken up by any conference organisers so I thought I’d take the bull by the horns and set up my own online sessions ahead of Learning Live to allow people up to ask any questions they may have about my session, make sure it’s right for them etc.

I’ll be using Google Hangouts to deliver these bite sized sessions which I know may prevent some corporate folk from attending due to Google Hangouts being blocked, so I’ve scheduled an evening session too.

To participate, visit the relevant link above a few minutes before each session commences, set up your speakers/microphone and let’s chat!

See you online?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/pre-learninglive-session-via-google-hangouts/feed/6The Ones That Got Away – video storieshttp://tayloringit.com/2013/08/the-ones-that-got-away-video-stories/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/the-ones-that-got-away-video-stories/#commentsWed, 28 Aug 2013 16:24:32 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3996As I mentioned in this previous post, I’m writing a series of posts that lift the lid on some of the plans and ideas that either never saw the light of day or (as in this initial post) never fully developed.

One of my plans in my previous organisations was to use our internal collaborative platform to share a number of video stories.

In order to ‘lead the way’ I produced and starred in the first video (which I’m unfortunately unable to share video as I no longer have access to the original file). In it, I tell a story of observing a practice amongst colleagues that my experience told me was the ‘wrong way’, the question I asked the viewer of the video was…

If you observed the same would you:

a) Stop them and inform them of the ‘right way’, saving a lot of their time, but potentially taking a valuable ‘learning experience’ away from them?

b) allow them to continue until they realised they were wrong, which would waste time, but serve as a valuable experience

I also stumbled upon an interesting story whilst interviewing my former HR Director as part of the Learner Survey I was undertaking. In it he tells a story of conducting a series of coaching sessions with a colleague in Spain, utilising the FaceTime function on their iPads.

The ‘takeaway’ from the video was to challenge your preconceptions (he had originally been sceptical over how well the sessions would run if they were not face-to-face) – why not watch the video below and hear the story from Brett Reid himself?

Now that I had some examples of video storytelling to share with others I went on the search for other stories.

Here are some of the stories I went looking for/that found me

Sales success stories – Interview the top salesperson of the month – what did they do/say etc that made them the top salesperson? What made them perform better than others.

Sales horror stories – what went wrong with a sale that they thought was guaranteed?

Thinking and acting differently stories – recording people who were doing something differently. Why? What effect was it having? (one particular story centered around a team who were feeling ‘stale’. They decided to take it in turns to identify a TED talk and distribute it to each team member prior to each team meeting and to use time during the meeting to discuss the content of the video. The upshot of which was that they felt re-energised as a team and several ‘innovative’ new ideas were forthcoming.

My plan had been to support these individuals/teams in terms of the recording, editing and distribution of each video until such time that they felt they had the skills and confidence to do so themselves, at which point I would step away.

I even incentivized them by suggesting that if they (either individually or as a team) recorded and distributed 4 videos over 3 months that the L&D budget would purchase that team a Flip-type camcorder in order to allow them to progress on their own.

You may notice that I said

“My plan *had* been”

Because I left the organisation just as the pieces were falling into place, recording meetings were being booked etc

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/the-ones-that-got-away-video-stories/feed/1The Ones That Got Awayhttp://tayloringit.com/2013/08/the-ones-that-got-away/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/the-ones-that-got-away/#commentsTue, 27 Aug 2013 17:40:57 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3984Regular readers will know that wherever possible I try to blog about work that I am doing / have done as opposed to theoretical, utopian views about what we should be / shouldn’t be doing in L&D.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this per se, but there’s only so many ‘we should be collaborating more‘, ‘social learning is the way to go‘, ‘mobile learning is here to stay‘ etc posts that I can read.

What I prefer to read are those posts that detail what people have done / are doing, posts that are rooted in what I refer to as ‘The Real World’, hence my inclination towards writing those types of posts. However this has got me thinking….

What about the pieces of work, brainwaves, bright ideas etc that never saw the light of day, that never came to fruition, that we stopped (for whatever reason) in their tracks – not because they were barking mad, risky ideas but because….. well just ‘because’?

Perhaps there’s something in those loose plans that might be of use to others?

That’s why I’m starting a series of posts centering around ‘The Ones That Got Away’!

I’m not sure what format they’ll take or how many of them there’ll be. But I do know that I have a few of them to share.

What about you?

What ideas of yours, despite them being completely logical and bona fide, never saw the light of day?

For anybody who’s interested in the concept of ‘working out loud’, you should check out the #ShowYourWork hashtag on Twitter or check out this online session that @JaneBozarth is facilitating.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/the-ones-that-got-away/feed/0‘Fixing’ compliance training at #LearningLivehttp://tayloringit.com/2013/08/fixing-compliance-training-at-learninglive/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/fixing-compliance-training-at-learninglive/#commentsSat, 24 Aug 2013 22:40:54 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3962I must applaud the Learning and Performance Institute and in particular those involved in planning this years Learning Live. For the first time that I have personally seen in the UK, an L&D conference (outside of the academic world) has asked people to submit proposal for available speaking slots, I believe this is a fantastic way of surfacing those ‘hidden’ stories and allowing ‘new’ people to gain exposure, let’s hope that other conferences follow suit in the future.

I submitted a number of proposal and have been fortunate in gaining a speaking slot, here’s the official blurb

Session: ‘Compliance Training – From Course to Campaign!’

Compliance training is often seen by many L&D practitioners as a ‘thorn in their side’; a necessary evil that despite their best efforts, remains low-down on most learners list of things to concern themselves about.
If this applies to you and/or your organisation and you’d like to ﬁnd out how to take a signiﬁcant step change in the delivery of your compliance training, then this session is for you!
Craig Taylor will guide you through his journey in turning compliance training from a selection of stand-alone courses to a series of ongoing campaigns.
He’ll share his background thinking, hints and tips to obtain that critical ‘buy in’ from stakeholders and the research to back up his campaign approach along with those all important ‘lessons learnt’; AKA the bits that Craig got wrong!

Session Objective 1: Why the move from course to campaign?
Session Objective 2: How to obtain that all important ‘buy in’ from stakeholders
Session Objective 3: How to ask for what you want from external agencies.
Session Objective 4: Why you might consider a campaign for a campaign.
Session Objective 5: Share Craig’s lessons learnt

The LPI have also been asking speakers to promote/give an insight/’flip’ their session by using Social Media, multimedia etc in advance of the event. I think this is, in principle, a fantastic idea, but one that is not without it’s problems, which I have blogged about previously.

I’ve used a few approaches to promote / prepare people for my session.

I used Vine for the first time, to ask some ‘leading’ questions to hopefully encourage people to attend my session (I can definitely see Vine vids being a part of a wider campaign)

I used Powtoon to create an animation, again offering a WIIFM for anybody still undecided as to which session to attend.

I also experimented with SMS text messaging ahead of the session, why not get involved with my experiment? (details in tweet below)

I’ve been tinkering with text messaging as part of my pre #LearningLive campaign. Wanna take a look? Text learninglive to 07462251335

I’m not planning on creating any ‘new’ marketing material, but there’s still the best part of 3 weeks to the event…. so who knows?

So now it’s over to you…

If you’re coming to my session…

Why?

What do you want from me / the other people attending my session?

What problem are you trying to solve?

What ‘ Monday morning quick wins’ are you looking for?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/fixing-compliance-training-at-learninglive/feed/6Book Review: The Checklist Manifestohttp://tayloringit.com/2013/08/book-review-the-checklist-manifesto/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/book-review-the-checklist-manifesto/#commentsSun, 18 Aug 2013 15:18:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3930A few weeks ago I was reading this excellent post from Clark Quinn, when I noticed that he referenced the book ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande.

This was a book that I purchased (in paper format) and read 2-3 years ago, but must admit to it being ‘ahead of my time’ at the time in my career I read it. I did a bit of digging around to try and find it again, but was unable to do so, so repurchased it as a Kindle version.

What was immediately of interest to me was just how differently the book resonated with me in comparison with the first time I read it (I think the lesson here is to go back and revisit ‘things’, even ‘things’ that didn’t make sense/seem relevant/etc at the time). Concepts and examples that were lost on me a couple of years ago, all of a sudden started to make sense, to take shape, to add value! The book hadn’t changed – I had!

I could offer a lengthy review of the book, however that would seem like a waste of the functionality that the Kindle platform provides, so instead, here are my Kindle Highlights from the book, along with some additional notes that mirrored my thinking at the time of reading. (it appears that Amazon won’t allow you to see ‘just’ the notes for a specific book, so here’s a screenshot showing you where to click to see ‘some’ of my notes (not sure why you can’t see them all?))

What I will say is that of you’re in an L&D role, this is a book that you need to read.

Maybe you’re new to the world of Performance support?

Perhaps you’re familiar with, maybe even practicing the concept?

It could be that you know it’s what you should be doing, but you need something to back that up, perhaps some evidence to convince others?

Whatever you’re doing, at whatever level – this book will have something in there for you.

Despite me having the title of Learning Technologies Manager and the organisation generally defining ‘elearning’ as ‘click next, self-paced’ modules I was able to utilise a range of methods and media to meet needs that had previously been meet via traditional eLearning and physical classroom activity.

In 10 months I:

Produced a handful of taking head videos and placed them on our internal collaborative platform , Jive.

Produced 15-20 screencasts and placed them onto Jive.

Produced a handful of audio interviews.

Created a single ‘go to‘ L&D group on Jive. This served as both a space to start, encourage and participate in conversations as well as a ‘marketing’ space for our activities.

Designed a game involving a range of posters each including a different QR code which would link to various multimedia assets.

Hosted the multimedia elements mentioned above on a Vimeo Pro account which provided immediate access coupled with an element of security.

Used SurveyMonkey to revolutionise our assessment process and move it toward the Brinkerhoff Success Case method.

Used Jive to create an activity that mirrored a real life customer interaction which created strong intrinsic motivators to utilise the provided performance support tool to resolve the ‘situation’.

Introduced the concept and practical application of ‘spaced repetition of learning’ using Retenda, in order to support the activity mentioned above.

Used Adobe XI Pro to create a range of FAQs documents and checklists.

Used tools such as Powtoon and Sparkol to create a range of animations to support various activities.

Facilitated various online sessions using Adobe Connect.

Used a Pro Scoop.it! account to curate content on a range of subjects.

In short, I was able to operate up to, and indeed beyond, the expectations of the role, without ever having to go near an LMS or an authoring tool.

Was it easy? – No

Did everybody ‘roll over’ without a fight? – No

Did I experience some challenges? – Yes

Did some of the activities take longer than they really needed to due to the ‘engagement’ that needed to be done? – Yes

Did I win a lot of fans along the way as a result of sitting down with them and talking through their problem, my proposal and their fears? – Yes

Would I take this approach again? – Absolutely

Regular readers will know that I’m not one of the ‘Burn the LMS/authoring tool‘ fraternity as I truly believe they do have a place, depending on what you are trying to achieve, so I wouldn’t have been averse or afraid of using them should the solution to the problem have dictated it – but here’s the interesting thing….. it never did.

Not in all the time I was there or the many pieces of work I was involved was a ‘piece of elearning in an LMS’ or an ‘exodus to the classroom‘ ever the right answer.

Makes you wonder how many times as an Industry we’ve gone down the wrong route for fear of challenging, for worry of what people will think of our ‘off the wall‘ ideas???

So over to you…

Where have you come up with an alternative to the ‘old favourites’ approach?

Were you allowed to progress it?

What was the impact on your relationship with the original requester, when (and if) you produced an alternative to their request.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/08/3916/feed/3Virtual Learning Show 2013 – Day 2http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/virtual-learning-show-2013-day-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/virtual-learning-show-2013-day-2/#commentsThu, 27 Jun 2013 16:04:37 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3841As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m participating in the 2013 2-day Virtual Learning Show. Whilst I was directly involved as a panel chair on Day 2, I also attended as a participant .

Here are my reflections on Day 2 and in particular each session, with a particular focus on:

A key ‘take-away’ from the sessions content itself

The way in which it was facilitated (in part or in whole) with a view to what can I re-use/build upon for myself.

Fear and loathing in ‘Las Virtual’

Presented by Matt Turner 11.00 – 12.00 UK BST

In many organisations, Virtual Classrooms are accepted as an efficient, powerful and flexible way to deliver learning. However, the tipping point has not yet been reached and some decision-makers still appear fearful, confused, or even downright scared of adopting VC, leaving L&D practitioners puzzled at the challenge of the internal sell-in.

“Fear and Loathing in Las Virtual” will be an enjoyable and frank look at why some are slow to move into the Virtual Classroom and what others have done to introduce it successfully. The session will use a variety of examples, scenarios and tips on what works well, touching on content, communication, attitudes, terminology, sell-in and more in the process. As part of a collective responsibility to ensure VCs reach their potential in the UK, your experiences and contributions in this session will help its success!

My key content take-away

There was a great deal of discussion around what we ‘call’ this approach to delivery. There seemed to be a split between those who thought we shouldn’t worry about the language we use to describe it and those (myself included) who thought that it was worth the effort to get the ‘language/terminology’ correct.

I’m always conscious over the language that I use when talking within my organisation, but I’m going to check with the rest of my team to gain their perspective.

My key facilitation take-away

Matt asked us to post any links we had to the host ‘privately’ so that she could put them up at the end of the session. I’m not sure that I’d ever ask this…. surely if a person posts a relevant, contextual link into the slide panel there and then it provides an opportunity for people to immediately take a look ‘outside’ of the session and potentially bring a different perspective into session?

There’s also the distinct possibility that some people may leave the session early, so any links that are dropped into chat at the end of the session will be missed.

Live online learning at Hogan Lovells: our journey

Presented by Claire Line
12.30 – 13.30 UK BST

Claire Line is Learning Technologies Manager at global law firm Hogan Lovells. As part of that role, she has carried out extensive research into virtual classroom and online learning technologies. Since 2004, she has introduced a number of learning technologies for IT training and legal learning, including virtual classroom, web conferencing and video production.

In this discussion-based session, Claire will take you through her journey of how virtual learning was implemented at Hogan Lovells and will discuss the successes, the barriers she encountered, and some of the key points she has learned that will help you in your project to implement virtual learning in your organisation. Be sure to bring your questions to ask!

My key facilitation take-away

No matter how much you are rushing for the start of the session ALWAYS undertake any audio setup process. Claire was very muffled at the start of the session which led to me stepping away for some time and by the time I got back the microphone issue had been resolved and I’m missed a good chunk at the beginning.

Using game design to create approach-based learning

Presented by Julie Dirksen 14.00 – 15.00 UK BST

Game designers have been using concepts like a structured flow of goals, levels, and accomplishments to create a sense of engagement and efficacy in players. One of the key elements in creating fully engaging game experiences is the psychological concept of flow-creating game environments that keep players in tenuous balance between their level of ability and level of challenge. Learners should have the same sense from learning experiences. The speaker will take a look at the way games and other forms of entertainment media create flow states, how to create that in learning environments, and why the act of learning is crucial to this type of engagement.

In this session, you will learn:

What we know about attracting and maintaining learner attention

How game designers create sticky and compelling experiences

How to structure learning experiences that will engage learners

My key content take-away

People’s personal challenges will ALWAYS be better than anything I can come up for them. I need to make sure that this is carefully woven in to the upcoming ‘campaign’ that I am working on.

My key facilitation take-away

Julie invited us to tell her what the ‘most boring subjects’ were that we had been asked to create training on. She then (bravely) used those topics to craft a significant chunk of her session around. This is something that I’d be keen to explore.

I found that there was a lot of talking at the beginning of Julie’s session and limited interaction, coupled with the somewhat scientific content and it being immediately after lunch led to a reduced level of concentration on my part. I need to think about the scheduling of any online sessions in the future taking part immediately after lunch (just as I should in a f2f environment)

You’ve probably seen, attended or perhaps even participated in ‘panel discussions’ before, but how many of them have been online? That’s why we thought it was time to extend people’s perceptions as to how online classroom tools can be used. In this session you’ll have the opportunity to participate in a live online panel discussion which will include workplace L&D practitioners from 4 countries and 4 time zones!

This is your opportunity to hear the thoughts and opinions on how emerging tech can be used to enhance and enrich our offerings and ultimately add value to our businesses? Perhaps you’d just like a second (or third!) opinion on a plan you have. Maybe you’re struggling with a particular aspect of a solution and would like to hear how others have approached it or would approach it.

Don’t be put off by what other people tell you can/can’t be done. The use of 5 webcams simultaneously, across 5 countries and 5 time zones is something that many people will tell you is a foolhardy exercise within an online classroom. Well we did it today and it worked! Admittedly there were 2 occasions where there was a short ‘freeze’, however I’ve been in sessions that are faaaaaaar less webcam dependant and the same thing/worse has happened, so it’s not going to put me off in the future.

Did you participate?

What did you take away from the day / each session?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/virtual-learning-show-2013-day-2/feed/3My day playing at marketing at #AMC13http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/my-day-playing-at-marketing-at-amc13/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/my-day-playing-at-marketing-at-amc13/#commentsTue, 25 Jun 2013 20:13:12 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3818Earlier today I attended Another Marketing Conference in order to try and (as I said in this previous post) gain a different perspective on ‘changing behaviours’ from outside the L&D bubble that I’ve found myself living in.

Readers of my ‘Small Chunks‘ post will know that instead of trying to capture every piece of information that is conveyed during conference sessions I always try and identify ‘small chunks’ that I can take away and work on as opposed to HUGE strategic-thinking pieces.

09:30

You can’t have too much data! or can you?

Peter Waggett
Emerging Technology, IBM

Data is everywhere and it is now easy to capture information on our customers and prospects. Getting beyond the hype associated with Big Data requires understanding of the data and knowledge to turn it into something actionable. This talk will discuss the issues associated with the practical and responsible use of Big Data and detail future trends.

My takeaways from this session:

Peter told us the story of ‘Millenium Challenge‘, a US Military exercise in which the ‘friendly’ force mulled over its data for so long that the ‘opposing’ force just went ahead and ‘destroyed’ several key US assets. In other words, data analysis is all well and good, but without any ‘action/decision’, well…… it’s just…… data analysis! This is something that I’ll research further and if tenable, I’ll keep it up my sleeve should it ev er look like I’m in danger of being forced into ‘analysis paralysis’!

Peter talked us through the Jeopardy / Watson exercise (as he put it, Siri on steroids!). He reckons that in 5-6 years this level of semantic technology will be on the High Streets – another nail in the coffin for L&D or another wonderful opportunity?

10:00

What Nokia did next

Richard Murphy
Global Director of eCommerce, Nokia

For years Nokia was the most desirable brand when it came to mobile phones. However, the smartphone revolution shook things up.

Consumers have changed and so has marketing. The pace of change is accelerating, putting more pressure on organisations to embrace this new digital reality and transform the way they market. How Nokia embraced this new digital reality will offer comfort and inspiration to all of us trying to change our approaches and cultures.

My takeaways from this session:

Richard identified the physical commuting routes his bosses took into work and bought the posters/advertising space along that route! The feedback from his bosses was great!

Whilst I have no need to go that far, I do think there is some value in locating a lot of my mandatory training campaign material within eyeshot of our Directors office door, not only to ‘big up’ what we’re doing, but more critically to encourage the cascade of the messages from Director level.

10:30

Seamless brand building

Julie Strawson
Director of Marketing, Monotype

A look at how technology can challenge your brand, why the process of branding is changing and how to deliver reliable on-brand experiences at every consumer touchpoint.

Julie will also reveal the results of a new piece of research into how publishing is changing and what’s on offer for advertisers across 100 leading consumer titles conducted by Brand Perfect, Monotype’s community for brands, designers and developers.

My takeaways from this session:

My upcoming mandatory training ‘revamp’ will adopt a campaign approach. Julie reminded us that we need to have a cohesive and seamless experience from one format to another. Many of the videos and animations from the campaign will reside inside our internal collaboration platform, which unfortunately (as it sits in the public domain) requires a login everytime you open the platform up. This isn’t much of a problem when ‘deskbound’ as the platform forms a part of many people’s workflows, it becomes a problem however when I start to encourage people to access the media from their mobile devices as I feel that asking people to ‘log in’ from their mobile device is only likely to create another barrier to the content.

To get around this problem, I plan to dual-host the videos within a Vimeo Pro account. This will allow mobile users to get access to the content quickly and seamlessly as advised by Julie.

11:45

It’s all about ME (Marketing Effectiveness)

Julie Roberts
Marketing Effectiveness Director, TMW

How do we measure our true success? How do we know if we are being effective? And how can we improve? Investing in ‘big data’ is pointless without a concrete effectiveness strategy. Julie will look at, with the increasing amounts of data available, how we should plan, do, check and (importantly) act in 2013.

My takeaways from this session:

I’ll be honest, this was my least enjoyable/useful session of the day which is a pity as this was the one I was hoping to get the most from due to the work I am doing at the moment. There was a LOT of being talked at, poor slide design, lots of “I’m sure everybody is aware of xyz“, rushing through content etc

How do we develop products, services and websites that provide customers with a rich, immersive and satisfying experience? What are the little peculiar human behaviours that we need to be aware of and tap into?

The hedgehog and the fox – and why the social sciences are plural for a reason

Rory Sutherland
Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK

Recent evidence suggests that our brains – and hence the way we make decisions – may be more variegated than we think – or than we want to believe. One of the implications is that single models of human behaviour may be woefully inadequate, or even misleading. We simply need to accept that a single toolbox may never work

My takeaways from this session:

All models are wrong; but some are useful – and some are dangerous!

Rory suggested

Anybody with a ‘number’, trumps anybody with an ‘abstract noun’ – I’ve had some recent successes when quoting/demonstrating Ebbinghuas’ Forgetting Curve. I’m going to make sure that I have more numbers in my back pocket.

Don’t get bogged down in the attitudinal aspect, make it easy for people change their behaviours and they will construct their own reasons for doing so.

Rory shared this video with us. I can’t for the life of me remember what the context was, but it’s funny so what the Hell!

14:30

Context and content: the two pillars of mobile marketing

Paul Berney
Chief Marketing Officer, Mobile Marketing Association

When it comes to mobile marketing it is vital that we understand how to deliver our content and the role that context plays in how that content is received.

Paul will talk about how the plethora of small screens is changing the way we need to think about our mobile strategies and whether or not we think that it really affects us.

My takeaways from this session:

Include a mobile call to action on my mandatory training campaign material that I can expect people to be accessing via mobile devices. As I’m planning on using Delivr.com to manage my mobile delivery I’ll be able to place the ‘call to action’ on the media landing page as opposed to having to place it on the poster (so can reduce environmental impact, printing costs etc)

I’d been planning to link out to videos / animations etc from physical posters/pop up banners etc, I’m still going to do this, however Paul provided an example of AR enabled sports tickets which has prompted me consider other options for linking the physical world with the online world.

One of the most respected figures in advertising, Dave Trott, talks about the importance of the creative spark and how we need to manage our teams and our time to release a little bit more of that inner creative mischief.

My takeaways from this session:

Alas, by this point I had had to dash for my train to start any chance of getting home at a reasonable hour. This is a pity as the tweets that were coming out of Dave’s session suggested he was ‘plain speaking’ which would have made a nice change from one or two of the other speakers.

My overall observations of the day:

It was blatantly clear from every session that online/digital/mobile was a critical element of any behaviour changing marketing plan. Dare I say it, but the level and depth of conversation far exceeded the conversations that I see at most (not all) L&D conferences, a clear indication (I think) about how far behind we are in our thinking???

I have to admit that at times some of the conversation was above my head. I’m not saying this is a bad thing because let’s be honest I was ‘out of my usual comfort zone’ so I guess it’s to be expected, but it also served as a reminder to check the language and references that I use when speaking to people within my organisation around subjects that are within my comfort zone, but very possibly outside of theirs.

It was a welcome relief to hear that the general approach I’m taking with my organisations mandatory training in terms of creating a campaign around it, is broadly spot on. I strongly suspect that my attendance at this conference will help to tweak some of the ideas we are planning to ensure that they have the maximum chance of hitting home and changing behaviour.

Biggest non-surprise of the day was that there were no other Learning Professionals there (at least none that I could ascertain during the breaks and lunch), which is a real shame….. perhaps next year?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/my-day-playing-at-marketing-at-amc13/feed/1Breaking the L&D bubble at #AMC13http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/breaking-the-ld-bubble-at-amc13/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/breaking-the-ld-bubble-at-amc13/#commentsSat, 22 Jun 2013 13:09:56 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3810I’ve tweeted and blogged several times before about the ‘bubble’ and ‘echo chamber’ that many of us L&D folk live in.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/breaking-the-ld-bubble-at-amc13/feed/1Virtual Learning Show 2013 – Day 1http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/virtual-learning-show-2013-day-1/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/virtual-learning-show-2013-day-1/#commentsThu, 20 Jun 2013 15:32:33 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3798As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m participating in the 2013 2-day Virtual Learning Show. Whilst I am directly involved as a panel chair on Day 2, I am also attending both days as a participant .

Here are my reflections on Day 1 and in particular each session, with a particular focus on:

A key ‘take-away’ from the sessions content itself

The way in which it was facilitated (in part or in whole) with a view to what can I re-use/build upon for myself.

Keynote: Virtual Learning in Europe

Presented by Colin Steed
10.30 – 11.00 UK BST

Chairman and organiser of The Virtual Learning Show, Colin Steed welcomes you all to this unique event.

During his Keynote, Colin will report on the headline findings of the ‘Live Online Learning in Europe’ survey he conducted over the past two months. There are some revealing findings that you’ll find invaluable when planning your live online sessions in your organisation. There will be plenty of discussion in this session so bring your questions!

My key facilitation take-away

Colin commented when he could see the ‘multiple people typing’ message appear above the chat pod and informed people that he was going to pause until those responses had come in. I’ll keep an eye on that area above the chat panel in the future and moderate my delivery accordingly.

Virtual Training : from desktop to device

Presented by Elaine Giles 11.00 – 12.00 UK BST

If you think webinars are the epitome of a desk-bound sport – think again!

The major web conferencing services all provide feature rich Apps for mobile use. You can be forgiven for thinking these are limited to providing a second class way of just attending a session. The truth is very different – these Apps provide a feature rich experience including access to chat, slides, polls, audio, video and whiteboards.

In this session, Elaine will cover:

Present from an iPad?

Monitor your audience with just an iPhone?

Deliver an entire webinar via your Android device?

All is possible! In this session you’ll find out just how far virtual training has come in recent times.

My key content take-away

Look into how I might be able to use Reflection to upskill people on using their mobile devices via our Adobe Connect platform/

My key facilitation take-away

Don’t get caught up in the demo at the expense of the attendee interaction. There was a lot of talking from the facilitator but I felt very little interaction with the audience other than ‘feel free to chat in the chat panel’ comments.

Engaging your learners with meaningful interactions

Presented by Phil Green
12.30 – 13.30 UK BST

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck“. To some trainers and teachers, working live online may seem less daunting than other forms of eLearning. It does, in most cases depend upon the teacher to be present. It can easily support the model of “sage on the stage”, and presenters can deliver elegant and beautifully illustrated lectures very close up and personal. If it looks like a lecture, sounds like a lecture and works like a lecture then…

Many examples of ingenious interactions have been developed to exploit the features of virtual classrooms, or to overcome the constraints. Lectures and intricate interactions have their place, but in a spirit of “less is more”, how can a skilled facilitator mount truly participatory sessions? In this webinar Phil Green shows some examples of how “a little technology and a lot of creativity” can engage learners live online in meaningful activity without over-elaboration.

My key content take-away

I was only able to attend the first few minutes of this session so I’ll update this once I’ve listened to the recording

My key facilitation take-away

I was only able to attend the first few minutes of this session so I’ll update this once I’ve listened to the recording

Comparing Webex, Adobe Connect and Goto for your virtual sessions

Presented by Karen Hyder
14.00 – 15.00 UK BST

Once you calculate the time and travel cost savings, the decision to offer training online using virtual classroom software is easy. Choosing the right software to support your content, trainers, and learners isn’t as easy. There are many tools on the market, and the features and licensing fees vary dramatically.

In this session, you’ll see three different virtual-classroom software tools demonstrated, and you’ll discuss the features you’ll NEED, as well as the ones that are really NICE to have.You’ll also learn some simple methods you can use to ensure successful sessions, regardless of which tool you use.

In this session, you will learn:

What to look for when shopping for a virtual classroom

Which features make premium products worth having

What you can do to ensure your virtual classes are successful from the start

My key content take-away

If I’m totally honest, I took very little content away NOT because it wasn’t there, but because my Org has recently settled upon using Adobe Connect and as such I undertook a LOT of research into the pros and cons of each tool, which Karen essentially covered in this session.

My key facilitation take-away

I plan to use a poll at the end of my session to ask ‘what do you need next’. This would serve as a great way for me to identify who needs what sort of support and will help me concentrate my efforts.

Engagement is the best way to create an effective learning experience for your participants. And engagement stems from your training class design.

In this session, Cindy Huggett, author of the best selling book ‘Virtual Training Basics’, will explain five techniques to design an interactive virtual training programme.

You will leave this final session of the day with some practical tips that you can immediately apply when designing your next live online session!

Design techniques for virtual training programmes

Select activities to effectively engage any audience

Establish interactivity from the start of a session

My key content take-away

There was a lot of talk around providing ‘intro’ sessions to the online classroom tool BEFORE the actual ‘real’ event commences. I’ve been running some ‘hidden’ intro sessions under the guise of ‘getting to know’ sessions about our intranet, however these are due to finish soon. This session has reinforced my determination to get some more of these ‘intro’ sessions into the diary…..

My key facilitation take-away

Cindy spent a lot of the session responding to attendees questions and used them to steer her session, rather than the questions being ‘in addition’ to her content/intended direction. I’d like to think that I’ll do this in the future.

Did you participate?

What did you take away from the day / each session?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/06/virtual-learning-show-2013-day-1/feed/3From Compliance Course to Campaign Part 3 – Getting outside helphttp://tayloringit.com/2013/05/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-3/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/05/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-3/#commentsSat, 25 May 2013 09:40:23 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3773If you haven’t read this series to date it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set the context for this post…

Once I’d won the SMEs over (I’m still pinching myself to be honest) I invited 3 x local vendors to come and meet with me to discuss my idea and to see if they would be interested in participating in the procurement process. This was a huge advantage for both sides as it:

allowed me to sense check my ideas and proposed approach

provided the vendors with an opportunity to take a brief look around my organisation, observe some of the resources and channels that we currently use (and may well use to communicate the campaign resources) and ascertain whether they felt we could work together.

I’m pleased to say that at this stage all 3 vendors were keen to work with us and all of them commented on how refreshing it was to see a traditional subject such as compliance training having a radically different approach taken to it.

Having previously worked as a vendor I understood the complications and ‘quirks’ that can be associated with a tender process, so I was very keen (from both perspectives) to own a process that was as transparent, fair and simple as possible. Rather than wrestle with (or expect others to) the typical procurement portals that are often the bane of a vendors life I decided to use Google Docs (I can’t get into the habit of calling it Google Drive) to write and communicate my Request for Proposal (RfP) through.

This had the advantage of being:

free

simple to use

mobile friendly

able to allow each of the vendors to ask any questions ‘within’ the document, thus negating the need for a procurement portal and allowing each of the vendors to see each others questions – and of course my responses – thus keeping the process as fair and transparent as possible.

Several of the vendors said that they seldom saw GDocs being used in this way and were welcoming of the approach.

In terms of what I included in my RfP I used a great deal of the advice contained in this post from Stephanie Dedhar along with my own previous experience as a vendor

Once I’d released the GDoc RfP I set up a f2f meeting at our offices to:

allow each of the vendors to come in

ask further questions in an open forum

and also to provide them with another opportunity to look at some of our existing comms channels etc.

Again, the feedback I got from this was very positive with one of the vendors saying that it helped to confirm their interpretation of the RfP and removed any ambiguity.

At that point I:

sat back

answered questions

arranged some access to some of our portals

conducted a few Adobe Connect session to explain our internal collaborative platform to some of the vendors

waited…..

I did learn some lessons along the way with this approach, here they are:

Get your potential providers in early, way before you write the RfP – the conversation will inevitably help you shape your thinking.

No matter how long you provide people with the opportunity to respond, somebody will be late.

Include a ‘please let us know if you intend to submit a proposal by xyz date’ request. I didn’t, and as a result had a vendor drop out with only 1 week to go until final submission, despite having the best part of 2 months visibility of the project scope!!!

Keep on reading this series of posts to discover what happened after we’d received the proposals and what I’m calling the ‘end of the beginning‘

If you’d like to discuss how we may be able to work together to bring about a fundamental change in the way your organisation delivers its mandatory training or would like to advise on how you can maximise the effectiveness of your next tender process then please get in touch.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/05/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-3/feed/6From Compliance Course to Campaign Part 2 – Getting ‘buy in’http://tayloringit.com/2013/05/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-2-getting-buy-in/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/05/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-2-getting-buy-in/#commentsSun, 05 May 2013 09:58:56 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3746If you haven’t read this series to date it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set the context for this post…

As previously alluded to, one of my perceived areas of challenge in moving compliance training from a course to a campaign, had been the buy in from the SMEs/sponsors/Compliance team.

The 8 x subjects mentioned in the previous post were distributed over 4 SMEs/sponsors. All bar one of them wholly bought into the idea of replacing a stand-alone course with an ongoing campaign approach. The 4th sponsor was bought into the campaign approach, but didn’t want to move away from having a self-contained course wrapped up in a SCORM object.

Here’s a short video outlining the questions I asked to each SME/sponsor.

OK, I’ll admit to some artistic licence when producing this video, but it fundamentally follows the thinking that I tried to get the SMEs/sponsors to consider, which was the juxtaposition between the importance of the subjects and the method of delivery.

Keep on reading this series of posts to discover how I communicated what we wanted, engaged with suppliers and (in the fullness of time) the end result!

If you’d like to discuss how we may be able to work together to bring about a fundamental change in the way your organisation delivers its mandatory training, then please get in touch.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/05/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-2-getting-buy-in/feed/0From Compliance Course To Campaign, Part 1 – The Backgroundhttp://tayloringit.com/2013/04/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-1-the-background/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-1-the-background/#commentsTue, 30 Apr 2013 18:20:44 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3739There’s been a great desk of chatter recently about compliance training. Actually, maybe it’s no more than usual, perhaps I’m just sensitive to it at the moment.

Why so?

Well because since the beginning of 2013 I have been working to revamp our mandatory compliance training offering from 2 perspectives

1. Is the content technically correct (fear naught Dear Reader, I’m passing the buck on this one to the SME)

2. Is the method and media we are using the most likely to positively effect behavioural change (this is where I swing into action!)

My plan is to adopt a campaign not course approach for each of these subjects, which (in my head) seems a logical and effective thing to do, all I have to do is convince the compliance department….

…. and you know what….

I have!!!

Keep on reading this series of posts to discover how I managed to get the SMEs/sponsors buy in, ascertain what we wanted, engaged with suppliers and (in the fullness of time) the end result!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/from-compliance-course-to-campaign-part-1-the-background/feed/1Trying something a little different in #VLS13http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/trying-something-a-little-different-in-vls13/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/trying-something-a-little-different-in-vls13/#commentsFri, 26 Apr 2013 21:04:42 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3731Regular readers will know that I participated in the Virtual Learning show towards the end of 2012, I had some original reservations around the thought of an entire day (the whole event was split over 2 non-consecutive days) being spent in online classrooms, however on the whole it was a positive experience, as you can read here.

I’m once again participating in the 2013 Virtual Learning Show, however this time I’ll be chairing a panel discussion which isn’t something you tend to see a lot of in online, synchronous activities. I won’t pretend that I don’t have some nerves about this:

Will having multiple ‘presenters’ cause problems?

As I want the panel to use their webcams, will this cause technical problems?

Will participants want to attend a session that doesn’t have a clearly defined structure and objectives?

However I’m sure that I’ll be able to put some of my concerns to bed over the next couple of months as I start to push Adobe Connect into areas I haven’t taken it before (either that or drastically change my plans!).

Whilst the title of the panel discussion is

How can emerging technology enrich our offerings and add value to our business?

I’m expecting that the session will turn into a general Q&A session between all participants.

When it came to selecting the panellists I wanted to avoid the ‘usual suspects’ and approached people who I know are doing some really great work within their own organisations but may not always get the airtime that I know they deserve – I hope you agree.

In order to maximise the time within the session itself, I’m inviting questions ahead of time via this Google Document

please feel free to drop any question you might have into this document.

Let us all know if you are planning on attending the panel discussion, or indeed #VLS13 in general.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/trying-something-a-little-different-in-vls13/feed/0Some simple ideas on how to redesign the conference experiencehttp://tayloringit.com/2013/04/some-simple-ideas-on-how-to-redesign-the-conference-experience/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/some-simple-ideas-on-how-to-redesign-the-conference-experience/#commentsSun, 14 Apr 2013 17:56:28 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3712Yesterday I got caught up in (or to be more accurate, butted my way into) a Twitter conversation that Sam Burrough was engaged in that was part of the great work he’s involved in around ‘rethinking/redesigning’ the conference experience.

I’ve spoken at quite a few conferences/workshops etc over the past couple of years and always strive to produce ‘something’ (blog post, podcast, video etc) for the attendees to access prior to the actual session itself to help them prepare, add context and ultimately help them get the most out of their investment in the session. Unfortunately the majority of organisers don’t allow that sort of material to be included in the official conference webpage – I know, I’ve asked! Instead they suggest that I market the material via Social Media (d’uh, hadn’t thought of that!), of course there are several short falls to this approach, some of which are:

Not everybody follows me via Social Media

Not everybody uses Social Media

Not everybody will be aware of hashtags

For me the almost guaranteed place that you will find attendees will be on the conference website and in particular on the session overview pages. So come on conference organisers, don’t hinder those speakers who have gone the extra mile – let them include a ‘link out’ in their session overview, maybe even an embedded video?

I’ve been to many conferences that had a conference app. I’ve only been to one that had a good conference app and that was Devlearn. If you’re planning on having a conference app for your next event, pleeeeeeeease make it a decent one!

@yourlpi Record each session (or audio as a minimum to allow speakers to sync it with their slides)

I’ve never researched this, but I’d be happy to concede that a full-on video recording/slide sync recording is an expensive matter, particularly if you’ve got a lot of sessions taking place, however in this age of affordable HD video recorders, tripods and editing software why not set up some DIY recording of each session? An even simpler option might be to record the audio of each session and then ask the facilitators to sync it with their slides (Hey, if they want to speak at your conference make them work for it!). Here’s one I prepared earlier (won’t work on an iPad/phone)

@yourlpi Conduct 15 min Adobe Connect sessions with each speaker to allow them to pitch their sessions ‘ in advance’. Help ppl make decision

Let’s be honest, when your conference attendees have a number of concurrent sessions to select from, other than previous experience/recommendations of the facilitator, all they’ve got to go in is the session overview on the conference website. Why not invite each speaker (and potential attendees) to participate in a 10 minute online session in which they pitch their session and take part in a Q&A. It may also give the potential attendees an insight into the presentation skills of the speaker (AKA are they going to rattle off a load of bullet points at me?)

@yourlpi Run an online session a wk or 2 *after* the event to provide a reflective Q&A session for attendees.

If you decide to conduct a ‘pre’ conference online session, why not go the whole-hog and think about a ‘post’ conference session. This could be a 15-30 minute session in which session attendees (I think ‘only’ session attendees) could follow up with any reflective questions and share any experiences that they have had in relation to trying to implement the speakers subject (if applicable). I’m sure this would help to break down the perception of the conference/workshop being a stand-alone event.

I’m sure that Sam and the rest of the guys ‘n’ gals that have been thinking about redesigning the conference experience will have tonnes more ideas, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled on their blog as I know that Sam is about to produce a write up on their thoughts.

Do you attend conferences/workshops?

How would you change things to maximise the experience?

Do you plan/host conferences/workshops?

Have you tried implementing any of the ideas above?

Did they work?

What have you tried in the past (regardless of whether it worked or not)?

http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/some-simple-ideas-on-how-to-redesign-the-conference-experience/feed/30What Learners Want – Part 4 – The ‘momentum’http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/what-learners-want-part-4-the-results/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/what-learners-want-part-4-the-results/#commentsFri, 12 Apr 2013 17:57:32 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3679If you haven’t read this series to date, it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set some context.

Having decided upon a pre-survey marketing campaign, we accepted that despite our best efforts to promote the survey that it would inevitably be ‘lost‘, ‘missed‘ or just ‘forgotten about‘ by many people, so we needed a plan to maintain the momentum of the marketing campaign…

During our planning stages of this survey the team that worked with me on it decided that it was critical for us to communicate the results (I used the word ‘results‘ lightly as the in-depth analysis would not take place until after the survey had closed) throughout the survey as well as some immediate stats upon completion. We were also resolute that we would not gloss over any critical or developmental feedback and would ensure that it was shown within any results/stats and not ‘buried’ beneath any overtly positive feedback.

Here’s what we did:

At the end of each week, I created a simple animation. The animation ran for a calendar week on our internal TV screens and was communicated via our internal emagazine, intranet, collaborative platform groups, blogs etc as well as being played at the start of as many meetings as possible in order to stir up discussion and debate around the survey.

The purpose of the animations was twofold:

To act as a method of being able to communicate some basic stats/comments that people had made. It was incredibly important to us that people could see that somebody was reading the survey submissions and wasn’t afraid to show comments/feedback that others may have felt were risque.

To act as a reminder/prompt for those who hadn’t undertaken the survey. The last frame contains a link to the survey itself.

Week 1

Upon completion of Week 2

Upon completion of Week 3

Upon completion of Week 4

Upon completion of Week 5 (the survey closed at this point)

In my next blog post, I’ll go into the data/findings that the survey provided us and how we plan to use it.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/what-learners-want-part-4-the-results/feed/0Designing interactions? Perhaps you shouldn’t bother…http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/designing-interactions-perhaps-you-shouldnt-bother/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/designing-interactions-perhaps-you-shouldnt-bother/#commentsSun, 07 Apr 2013 21:49:52 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3694I was recently asked to facilitate a session at an eLearning Network event. The rest of the speakers spoke in great detail about what interactions was, wasn’t and how to ensure that we used ‘science’ to craft our interactions.

Me?

I facilitated a session that essentially said “don’t bother” – well at least for some things….

Want to know more? Then check out my Slideshare below. I’ve added some accompanying audio that I recorded live on the day. Whilst this means that you get to hear the ‘real thing‘, you also have to put up with the vagaries of live recording….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/04/designing-interactions-perhaps-you-shouldnt-bother/feed/3My #COLF L4 Assignmenthttp://tayloringit.com/2013/03/my-colf-l4-assignment/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/my-colf-l4-assignment/#commentsSat, 30 Mar 2013 12:14:49 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3612As mentioned in a previous post, myself and the L&D team in which I work are undertaking the COLF programme.

Upon completion of many of the lessons/workshops there is an assignment to undertake as well as some additional reading.

Here’s my 4th assignment:

Assignment A

Start preparing the slides to support your final assessment, using what you have learned today. Be prepared to share at least 7 of these slides and an ‘interaction’ in the session advised by your course facilitator.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/my-colf-l4-assignment/feed/0What Learners Want – Part 3 – The ‘marketing’http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/what-learners-want-part-3-the-marketing/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/what-learners-want-part-3-the-marketing/#commentsSat, 09 Mar 2013 23:06:52 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3585If you haven’t read this series to date, it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set some context.

Having agreed upon the questions that would be asked in the survey, I went through a short period of validating the questions with colleagues and QA’ing the survey before deciding on a survey ‘launch’ date of 25/02/13 with a window of 5 weeks complete it, leaving a survey end date of 01/04/13.

I knew that in order to maximise the responses to the survey the marketing and engagement leading up to the survey launch and indeed during the launch would be critical.

Here’s a brief rundown of the activities that took place up to and including the launch of the survey

w/c 04/02/12 - Our HR Director (who is also the sponsor for this initiative) wrote a blog post explaining why he believes it is critical for people to participate in this survey and the benefit that both they and the overall business will gain from it. This blog post was featured in both our intranet and our weekly global magazine. A link to this article was also the ‘weekly announcement’ on the L&D homepage of our internal collaboration platform.

07/02/12 – A series of Focus Groups took place throughout the day during which 23 people from various areas of the business, representing our global workforce, from Directors downwards, participated in 1:1, group and telephone interviews. These interviews were conducted by myself and Laura Overton and allowed us to gather anecdotal, ‘free text’ responses to back up the hard data that the online survey would be gathering.

In order to maximise the ‘keenness’ demonstrated by the Focus Group participants we decided to provide them with immediate access to the online survey as opposed to making them wait for the ‘official’ launch date some 2-3 weeks later. We also hoped that it would increase the chances of those people recommending the survey to their colleagues once it was widely available.

w/c 11/02/12 - I produced a short video explaining how the survey would be distributed and the format that it would take. This video was featured in both our intranet, our weekly global magazine and became the ‘featured video’ on the L&D homepage of our internal collaboration platform.

w/c 18/02/13 – We are fortunate to have a number of info-screens distributed amongst our offices so a simple TV advert using static image and text was displayed throughout this week on a ‘looping basis’ advertising the launch of the survey the following week and directing people towards the previously written artcicles.

Learner Survey infoscreen advert

w/c 25/02/13 – The survey officially launched. My organisation no longer sends ‘organisation-wide’ emails (although that doesn’t explain why I keep getting ‘scheduled maintenance’ emails, for systems I have no access to!), so we were reliant upon our previous comms and an intranet article once again from my HR Director, this time the article included a link to the LSG magazine that mentioned the learner survey that we were undertaking. A link to this article was also the ‘weekly announcement’ on the L&D homepage of our internal collaboration platform.

We also commenced a series of ‘floor walking’ exercises during which we visited every desk over the 6 floors and 2 buildings ouf our Brighton location. We left a small ‘calling card’

Learner Survey desk-drop cards

on each keyboard as seen in the photograph above, which contained a link to the survey itself (this has been obscured in the photo). It also provided us with a wonderful opportunity to speak to people face-to-face about the initiative and answer any questions that they may have.

From a personal opinion, I took 2 things away from the floor-walking exercise:

People were surprised, but very welcoming of the fact that L&D were getting ‘out and about’ within the business.

Very few of the people that I spoke to (there were 5 of us involved in the floor walking) had seen the articles that had been placed on our intranet, in fact a lot of people said that they rarely, if ever visited the intranet.

In my next blog post, I’ll explain how we maintained the momentum of the initial marketing campaign and started to drip-feed weekly survey findings to people via some simple animations.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/what-learners-want-part-3-the-marketing/feed/3What Learners Want – Part 2 – The ‘questions’http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/what-learners-want-part-2-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/what-learners-want-part-2-2/#commentsMon, 04 Mar 2013 22:55:40 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3518If you haven’t read this series to date, it may be worthwhile doing so in order to set some context.

Having decided to commit to deploying the survey, Towards Maturity and myself started to create the question bank that our employees would be asked to respond to. Laura Overton already had a significant foundation for this survey so as a result it was more of a process of tweaking some of the questions to be able to the language that my organisation uses.

I took the decision early on to allow the survey to be undertaken anonymously, with the ability for respondents to enter their contact details should they wish to contacted by L&D to follow up on any of their responses.

As I’m sure you’ll appreciate there is a commercial agreement in place between my organisation and Towards Maturity, so I will not be posting the 23 specific questions, however they fell broadly into the following areas:

Demographic information

How people acquire info to do their job

Hardware people use

BYOD related questions

Willingness to share with others

Formal and informal methods

Rating of currently available methods/tools/platforms etc

Barriers

It was important that we didn’t alter the actual questions or response types themselves as our survey results will be feeding into a benchmark study in much the same way as the Towards Maturity Benchmark study, however there were some occasions where it was logical to amend the wording to some of the response options in order to provide clarity such as:

Using organisational roles instead of the default role options

Using organisational department names instead of the default options

Referring to our LMS, intranet and internal collaboration platform by name as opposed to generic titles.

All in all, the questions do a great job of gathering hard facts and data in order to help inform our L&D strategy and next steps.

In my next blog post, I’ll explain how we went about marketing and promoting this survey ahead of the official launch

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/03/what-learners-want-part-2-2/feed/2What Learners Want – Part 1 – The ‘why’http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/what-learners-want-part-1/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/what-learners-want-part-1/#commentsTue, 26 Feb 2013 22:01:09 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3294Towards the back end of 2012, my organisation formally entered into a working relationship with Towards Maturity to help us better understand our Benchmark results and help us work towards creating an L&D strategy.

During one of those initial meetings Laura Overton made an almost throw away remark about a ‘Learner Audit’ (I’m not overly keen on the name, so we’ve labelled it as a Learner Survey) that she had undertaken some time in the past and that she was considering resurrecting as an offering.

Unlike the Towards Maturity Benchmark survey, which tends to rely on answers by those in an L&D role/perspective, the Learner Survey allows every single employee in the organisation the opportunity to comment on

how they access content that supports them

from what devices

from what locations

what methods and media they find most effective

whether they are members of social networking sites

whether they are/would be willing to share their knowledge and practices with others etc

My eyes lit up at this point as I am about to assist in the development of our L&D strategy, so of course being able to hear from about our learners about their preferences, expectations, etc would be hugely beneficial.

If you’d like to hear more about the rationale behind the survey, here’s a short video of Laura explaining further.

In my next blog post in this series I’ll go into a little detail about the construction of the survey and how we worked together to provide a bespoke survey that would still allow multiple surveys to feed accurately into a wider-benchmark.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/what-learners-want-part-1/feed/14My #COLF L3 Assignmenthttp://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l3-assignment/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l3-assignment/#commentsTue, 26 Feb 2013 16:13:21 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3273As mentioned in a previous post, myself and the L&D team in which I work are undertaking the COLF programme.

Upon completion of each of the 9 lessons/workshops there is an assignment to undertake as well as some additional reading.

My organisation presently uses web conferencing and virtual classrooms, however this is to a very limited degree and the efficacy of these activities may be being reduced due to a lack of knowledge from the host/facilitator as to how to conduct traditionally ‘face-to-face’ activities in an online environment.

Within my organisations, I have seen examples of ‘telepresence’ meetings taking place and virtual classrooms being facilitated for some of our globally distributed personnel. I have also personally used and heard examples of people using their personal/work provided mobile devices to use tools such as Skype, G+ Hangouts and Facetime to enhance participation and collaboration.

Do you think it could use it for other parts of the organization?

I am struggling to think of areas of my organisation that would not benefit from utilising webinars/web conferencing/virtual classrooms etc.

Here’s a list of potential opportunities for use:

Conduct a monthly ‘clinic’ for the ‘Top 5′ reported issues to the IT Helpdesk

Conduct traditional meetings (perhaps I should lead the way with this with our monthly L&D meeting)

Systems training ahead of and during the early days of a new system launch

Explain products and services to potential/current clients

As a way of helping people transfer previous learning activities (regardless of method/media) to peoples workplaces i.e. as a way of connecting people to share their ‘what’s worked and what hasn’t’ stories

As a method of conveying the ‘why’ / ‘theory’ behind a subject that may require a future physical aspect to it. This approach would allow people to reflect upon the WIIFM prior to engaging in the face-to-face aspect

I’ve no doubt that there is a plethora of other ways for my organisation to maximise this approach, but at the moment the list is above is where I can see immediate benefit.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l3-assignment/feed/0My #COLF L2 Assignmenthttp://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l2-assignment/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l2-assignment/#commentsSat, 23 Feb 2013 22:38:53 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3239As mentioned in a previous post, myself and the L&D team in which I work are undertaking the COLF programme.

Upon completion of each of the 9 lessons/workshops there is an assignment to undertake as well as some additional reading.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l2-assignment/feed/0My #COLF L1 Assignmenthttp://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l1-assignment/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l1-assignment/#commentsTue, 19 Feb 2013 22:27:41 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3220As mentioned in a previous post, myself and the L&D team in which I work are undertaking the COLF programme.

Upon completion of each of the 9 lessons/workshops there is an assignment to undertake as well as some additional reading (I’m making some assumptions here as we’ve only just completed the first session).

When the assignment was originally discussed it was indicated that it should be submitted via a Word document, however when I enquired as to whether the submission could be made using any media format (as long as it was accessible by the facilitator), I was pleased to hear that that would be perfectly acceptable (I also suspect that this may become an overt option in the future for participants).

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/my-colf-l1-assignment/feed/2Apparently I’ve been ‘a bit quiet’http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/apparently-ive-been-a-bit-quiet/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/apparently-ive-been-a-bit-quiet/#commentsMon, 18 Feb 2013 17:52:38 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=3159Whilst having a Skype chat a few days ago the person I was speaking to suggested that my blogging frequency had died down a bit.

I checked my stats for the same time period as last year and the number of posts have indeed come down slightly, although to be honest I still feel that I’ve been blogging regularly and the hits/comments suggest that people are finding my posts to be of value, however ‘perception is everything’ as they say, so I thought I’d share with you what’s been keeping me busy over the past couple of months, especially as I’m planning to write a series of blog posts around some of these activities.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/apparently-ive-been-a-bit-quiet/feed/4Desperately seeking the Holy Grail of #mlearning authoring platformshttp://tayloringit.com/2013/02/desperately-seeking-the-holy-grail-of-mlearning-authoring-platforms/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/desperately-seeking-the-holy-grail-of-mlearning-authoring-platforms/#commentsMon, 04 Feb 2013 20:00:01 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2828If you haven’t seen this article by Float Learning, then I’d advise you taking a look, particularly if you are / have plans to maximise the growing mobile device phenomena (if you aren’t, prepared to be overtaken by your your employees AND your competitors).

One of the interesting aspects of this article was Chad Udell’s desire to see a mobile authoring platform that utilised a devices native functionality.

none of which allow the devices native functionality to be tapped into. Furthermore, having spoken to each of these organisations it appears that none of them have any plans to incorporate the functionality into their platform anytime in the near future.

So, I’d like to repeat Chad’s plea

Chad continues his long-running hope that a mobile learning development tool will be released that takes advantage of the affordances of mobile devices, whether it be through sensors, multitouch/gestural input, and so on. Many eLearning tool vendors say they support mobile learning output, but honestly, they mostly just mean they come with a channel to get the output onto a mobile device via HTML or maybe a set of mobile-optimized templates. Someone in 2013 will change that

If you are aware of any platforms that allow a ‘Joe Average’ end user to create mobile resources that tap into the devices native functionality then please let me know or of you already own such a platform – please get in touch as I’d love to take a closer look, possible even Beta test???

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/02/desperately-seeking-the-holy-grail-of-mlearning-authoring-platforms/feed/7A few bits and bobs from #LT13UKhttp://tayloringit.com/2013/01/a-few-bits-n-bobs-from-lt13uk/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/a-few-bits-n-bobs-from-lt13uk/#commentsThu, 31 Jan 2013 21:16:12 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2825Here are a few of the bits ‘n’ bobs that I created during my recent attendance at the Learning and Technologies Conference 2013. The videos are probably worth watching first as they may well add some context to the detail (or lack of) within the mindmaps.

I have made the mindmaps into ‘Wikimaps’, so please feel free to add to them for the ‘greater good’.

Day 1

Making learning a memorable experience

Mobile Performance Support

Day 2

Understanding Learning

(Whilst reviewing this mindmap, it dawned on me that it is the ‘poor relation’ of a mindmap that @britz spearheaded a few months ago which a number of us contributed to – I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a better map)

How to make games-based learning work for you

I hope you find these to be of use and hopefully you’ll be able to add to them….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/a-few-bits-n-bobs-from-lt13uk/feed/1Tayloring It is open for business!http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/my-plans-for-tayloring-it-open-for-business/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/my-plans-for-tayloring-it-open-for-business/#commentsSun, 27 Jan 2013 22:04:08 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2814Over the past 18 months, I’ve had a number of conversations with various people from around our industry as well as outside of it on the subject of ‘going it alone‘, ‘setting up my own business‘, ‘escaping the rat race’ – whatever you want to call it!

First and foremost, I’ve always been flattered that these people have thought that I had ‘something’ that others would be willing to enter into a contract with me to obtain.

Secondly, I’ve always admitted to those people that I have a fear and a dread of leaving safe and secure roles to enter into what I perceive as a more risky world of the ‘self employed’.

However, I now realise that even full time employment in established organisations is still fraught with risks and that anybody – and I’m probably including you, Dear Reader – who doesn’t have a back-up plan or a safety net of some description is probably not doing themselves any favours.

That’s why I’ve decided to take Tayloring It to a slightly different place than I had originally intended when I first started blogging 3 years ago.

I’ve decided to start up my own small consultancy ‘Tayloring It’. Before you ask, “No“, I haven’t left my current role and nor is the writing on the wall – I’m probably happier in this role than I have been in any role since I left the Army in 2006. But that doesn’t mean I can’t start establishing contacts along with developing a portfolio of work and business accumen just in case my world looks different in 12, 24 or however many months in the future. Plus, I’m pretty sure I can help some people/organisations with what they’re trying to achieve too – without it interfering with my day job.

My plan is to offer down to Earth advice on the subject of Learning Technologies and their application in today’s work place.

This advice won’t be based on past glories from years ago or from being a member of elitist Industry ‘think tanks’ – No! – My consultancy will be based upon recent and current experience of deploying learning technologies and the associated aspects within conservative and risk averse industries such as the Nuclear, Rail and Financial sectors.

Recent experience within the eLearning vendor industry has also provided me with fantastic opportunity to become involved in a large number of industries, organisations and projects, the experience from which has only added to my own workplace experiences.

My website is currently being built by a fantastic supporter of my idea, Zak Mensah and will be launched in the next couple of weeks explaining how I might be able to help you out in more detail, but in the meantime here’s a short explanation which will no doubt feature on the website:

Tayloring It is a consultancy that works with individuals and organisations to practically apply technology as a solution to real-world challenges. It could be large scale projects or supporting everyday tasks, but our team has successfully created new approaches that maximise the use of technology while actually saving money/reducing spend. We enhance
communication, learning and performance in the workplace, focusing on outputs not inputs. There are no other services like ours.

Tayloring It aims to change the face of learning technology in practice, one solution at a time.

I’ll be attending both days of Learning Technologies Conference & Exhibition 2013 and will be armed with my rather natty business cards

Tayloring It business card

so if you’d like to find out more about what my plans are the future, why not track me down, have a chat and grab a business card?

Alternatively, if our paths don’t cross, my details are on the card above.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/my-plans-for-tayloring-it-open-for-business/feed/15Another bandwagon I’m avoiding…http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/another-bandwagon-im-avoiding/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/another-bandwagon-im-avoiding/#commentsThu, 24 Jan 2013 13:52:56 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2812… is the annual ‘Learning at Work Day’ (I’m not linking to it out of principle)

What I can’t wrap my head around is that in recent years we, as L&D professionals have (and are) taking considerable steps in:

So why, once a year, do many of us jump on this particular bandwagon and before you say

“it’s nice to give it its own space”

or

“it’s good to concentrate and focus on it”

know that my response will be

“what are you doing for the other 364 days of the year”

“why aren’t you/your organisation concentrating on embedding learning and performance in every day life and if you are, why the need for this ‘focus’ once a year?”

Hell, why don’t we have an annual ‘Performing at Work’ day? (can you imagine how that would go down with your leadership team?)

I know it’s ‘fashionable’ to get on these sorts of bandwagons and with many ‘trendy’ names backing this, I’m sure that I’ll get some flack for these thoughts…….

Incoming…….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/another-bandwagon-im-avoiding/feed/9Bared faced lying (but in a nice way)http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/bared-faced-lying-but-in-a-nice-way/
http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/bared-faced-lying-but-in-a-nice-way/#commentsSat, 05 Jan 2013 22:08:19 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2802Since I started in my new role as a Learning Technologies Manager for Bupa International I’ve facilitated a number of ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions for my colleagues within the HR team around a number of learning technology related subjects.

To date these have been:

‘elearning….. discuss’ – a 2 hour sessions which helped people to see ‘e’learning as being more than just traditional, ‘click next’ SCORM objects

‘Getting Started with Mobile Learning’ – a 2 hour session which was essentially a dry run of my DevLearn 12 session

‘Welcome Aboard’ – a 2 hour session centering around the use of technology within the onboarding / induction process

The latest ‘Welcome Aboard’ session was facilitated as an Alternate Reality Game. In order to add the context in which the game was being unknowingly played I referred to some research that I heard about at DevLearn.

Only problem is that there was no such research at DevLearn – it was lie, a misdirection, a bluff, an economical use of the truth….

To help me with this bluff I created the animation below using Powtoon which I played during the early stages of the session/game after I had prattled on about the DevLearn research ‘discovery’

It’s a cracking piece of software; cheap, intuitive, a great trial period.

Why not give it a whirl and let us all know how you get on?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2013/01/bared-faced-lying-but-in-a-nice-way/feed/4Jumping on the bandwagon. My predictions for 2013…http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/jumping-on-the-bandwagon-my-predictions-for-2013/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/jumping-on-the-bandwagon-my-predictions-for-2013/#commentsSun, 30 Dec 2012 21:17:06 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2795As the end of a year approaches it’s time for the blogging fraternity to turn to the tried and tested ‘Top ‘this that and the other’ of 2012″ and ‘My predictions for 2013″ blog posts.

Far from me to turn down the opportunity to poke a little fun, here are my 2013 predictions / absolute cast iron guarantees

My Twitter stream will continue to be bombarded with Instagrammed photos of hot beverages and food. Fortunately I use Tweetbot which allows me to permanently block hashtags. Unfortunately hardly anybody tags their #instagram photos.

We will see a new word being made up within the L&D fraternity.

Certain bloggers will still rant on about ‘killer <insert any of the following, or choose your own> apps / platform / piece of hardware. Why can’t things just be ‘good’, ‘effective’, ‘worth having’?

Any podcast with ‘week’ or ‘weekly’ in the title is unlikely to ever be that, beyond its 5th episode.

I will unsuccessfully use facts, data and research against gut feelings and anecdotes.

2013 will be the year of mobile. Again.

Apple will release an ever-so-slight modification of a product. Tech bloggers will work themselves up into a crotch-twitching, salivating frenzy reporting on the ever-so-slight modification.

We’ll continue to have a L&D wide survey released approximately every 4 days

Many vendors will continue to ignore the native functionality of mobile devices whilst blowing their trumpets about how they are ‘leading’ in the mlearning world.

A ‘free to use’ service will change its Terms and Conditions. Users will form baying mobs and burning torches will be seen.

Certain ‘thought leaders’ in our field will use ever more bizarre diagrams to explore their concepts. It’s cos they’re clever see!

I’ll see you in 2013…

… no doubt saying ‘I told you so‘

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/jumping-on-the-bandwagon-my-predictions-for-2013/feed/2A ‘storified’ insight into my recent Lunch & Learn sessionhttp://tayloringit.com/2012/12/a-storified-reflection-on-my-recent-lunch-learn-session/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/a-storified-reflection-on-my-recent-lunch-learn-session/#commentsMon, 17 Dec 2012 20:56:45 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2781Since I started in my new role back in September, I’ve facilitated four Lunch and Learn sessions on the following subjects:

“what is elearning”

Mobile Learning

The use of technology in the onboarding/induction process

My most recent session on onboarding / inductions attracted some conversations on Twitter

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/podcast-26-one-month-on/feed/0My day out to My Learningworxhttp://tayloringit.com/2012/12/my-day-out-to-my-learningworx/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/my-day-out-to-my-learningworx/#commentsThu, 13 Dec 2012 07:31:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2764Today saw me attend the official launch of Learningworx which also doubled as a workshop centering on how to design online learning content.

Here’s a bit of the official blurb

Take a course. Make a course. Change the world.

As the UK’s first ‘crowd-sourced content’ learning centre, we want to help you join in and start creating your own learning content to share your knowledge and skills. But when it actually comes to making a course we understand you might not know where to start. You probably haven’t created any kind of online content before. You might even not be technologically minded. But we believe everyone has a course in them.

So here’s how we’re going to help you get started on making your course, whatever your area of interest, and earn some money out of your existing skills and knowledge. By the end of the day you’ll achieve level one of the mylearningworx expert status, meaning you are ready to rock and roll, and get cracking on creating your own learning content.

My reasons for attending were:

A colleague of mine @HayleyGordon was attending the event, who is a self confessed newbie to the world of learning technologies. Therefore I wanted to attend alongside her to provide some context between the workshop and what we are doing/plan to do within our Organisation.

Despite Kate Graham’s concern (Kate is one of the founders of Learningworx) that she didn’t want me to think I was being told how to ‘suck eggs’, I’m a firm believer that there’s always *something* to be taken away from workshops and events such as these, so I was still keen to attend and find out what that *something was*.

Readers of my blog will know that I long ago gave up trying to capture everything from every session/workshop I attend and much prefer to identify one or two ‘Monday morning, quick wins’.

Here’s a bit of background to each session along with my ‘key take aways’.

Track 1: Content Production

Gill Chester is the founder of the Little Man Project and has been involved in online learning for many years. Gill’s going to be taking us through the different tools and technologies you can use to create your learning content, many of which you’ll have already. Her tips and tricks are invaluable and will help even the least technical person get started. The session will include harnessing the power of Powerpoint, using simple PDFs for learning, screen capture tools, video and elearning authoring suites.

Seriously challenge the next request for a screencast of a simple process. Let’s give our people some credit

Look into the possibilities of using telephones to provide audio based performance support. (this may be difficult as many of our employees work in a call-centre and their ability to ‘dial out’ is restricted)

Track 2: Writing Great Content

One of the most important principles underpinning mylearningworx is to help our content creators write great courses. Tony Frascina of Objective Training and Chair of the annual Elearning Awards, will explore the theory of learning design, how to avoid common elearning pitfalls and how to engage your learners with your content. We’ll look at setting learning objectives and also consider how best to incorporate assessments and quizzes, or if they’re needed at all.

My key takeaways:

Tony’s session provided affirmation around the approach that I’ve taken recently and also provided some great tips for Hayley to act as a starting point for her journey into online learning design.

Track 3: Telling The World

Now once you’ve made your course, you’re going to want people to take it. But they’re not going to be able to take it if they don’t know it exists! So our communications director, Kate Graham, will be working through the different elements of how best to promote your course; from writing an attention grabbing yet appropriate course title, through to PR and promotion on social networking sites. Kate will also show you how the mylearningworx team will be working on your behalf to market your course to the world.

My key takeaways:

Think about the keywords that would be associated with your solution. More importantly get out and ask your employees what words they would use to describe the solution. Use these words to help you form your solution title, description etc

Well done to everybody involved in today’s launch and all those behind the scenes who have contributed to Learningworx, I’ll look forward to the next worxshop.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/my-day-out-to-my-learningworx/feed/3Virtual Learning Show Day 2http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/virtual-learning-show-day-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/virtual-learning-show-day-2/#commentsThu, 06 Dec 2012 16:24:23 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2751I recently attended Day 1 of a 2-day Virtual Learning Show. I thought I’d take the opportunity to post some reflections on Day 2 and in particular each session, with a particular focus on:

A key ‘take-away’ from the sessions content itself

The way in which it was facilitated (in part or in whole) with a view to what can I re-use/build upon for myself.

Welcome & Recap on Day 1

Conference organiser Colin Steed will recap on the lessons learned on Day 1 (29th November) and outline the highlights of the exciting presentations that are scheduled for today.

My key content take-away

Forget about trying to ‘influence upwards’ when it comes up to implementing virtual classrooms / webinars. Instead, look around the business for problems that are occurring for which webinars can provide a solution (this approach is effective for internal projects, particularly those with a

Converting Your Classroom Courses to the Virtual Environment

Presented by Cindy Huggett
11.00 – 12.00 GMT (UK time)

Organizations are increasingly moving from instructor-led classroom training to the synchronous virtual classroom. Whether you have already started to convert your face-to-face classes, or just beginning the process, this session will help you design for success!

In this session, you will learn that one minute of classroom time does not equal one minute of virtual classroom time. Some face-to-face activities simply don’t translate or even make sense online. Therefore, how do you know what to translate versus what to build from scratch? And what activity options are available that will help you meet the desired learning outcomes?

This interactive session will answer those questions and more. It will equip you – both instructional designers and trainers alike – to convert classroom training to virtual training using three simple guidelines.

Cindy swapped the layout of the session screen a few times. This was useful to see the flexibility of Adobe Connect, however it took a few moments to get used to the changing layout. I’m not saying that I would never change the layout during the session, but I would be very mindful as to the knock-on effect on the learner.

Tools and techniques to enhance live online sessions

Presented by Julie Wedgwood
12.30 – 13.30 GMT (UK time)

Julie Wedgwood has been facilitating live online sessions for many years and is a favourite webinar presenter on the LPI Webinar Programme over the years. She is also one of the most highly rated commentators and conference presenters on the subject of interactivity in sessions – both face to face and in the online environment. Her more recent session on the availability and use of digital learning tools for use in live online sessions.

IN this highly interactive session, explore and experiment with Julie as she shares:

Julie’s “Tell me that’s You” approach to delegate polls

Mosher’s Grid

Graffiti feedback

Tools to aid learner concentration

Webcam antics

Add-ons and other freebie tools

My key content take-away

Adobe Connect provides a large (and growing) number of extensions to further enhance the ‘out of the box’ functionality.

My key facilitation take-away

Julie used her webcam throughout the session with no discernible loss of quality. In the past the webinars I’ve facilitated for various 3rd parties have all insisted that I do not use the webcam. When I’m in a position to facilitate sessions within my own Org I’ll be making sure that I maximise the webcam where it adds value.

Creating Effective Performance Support Aids

Presented by James McLuckie
14.00 – 15.00 GMT (UK time)

Have you ever been at work and needed immediate help with a specific task or activity? Dr Jane Bozarth (author of Social Media for Trainers) calls it the “Hey Joe!” moment. “Hey Joe, can you help me to process this order.” “Hey Joe, how do I overcome this customer’s objection?”

Chances are most of your learning needs fall into this category. So why, then, is it often so difficult to find decent support to help us with the activities that are key to us being successful in our jobs? Many organisations are still locked in a cycle of providing push-down formal learning interventions, rather than making point-of-need learning materials available to help staff at the exact moment it is called for.

As learning and development professionals, we can anticipate the needs of staff and design performance aids that give staff the support they want, when they need it. Why send someone on a two-day workshop when a helpful template, reflective questionnaire, video tutorial or short how-to guide would be far more useful and effective?

James McLuckie, Learning Engagement Manager of Eden Tree, has been creating just-in-time support resources for the past ten years. In this webinar, he discusses what to consider when putting together performance aids that really help learners get to grips with a task, or how to overcome a problem.

My key facilitation take-away

There was in parts some lengthy ‘telling‘ going on. Whilst this probably didn’t come across to the facilitator, it certainly felt it to me. I’ll be mindful of this when prepping my future sessions.

Keep any tasks /questions simple. Some of the tasks seemed quite complicated and questions quite long.

My key content take-away

The chat panel indicated that there are still people out there chomping about learning styles! Quite sad that we are participating in what many would consider a modern approach to facilitation and there are still some ‘old school’ ideas floating around.

Designing Slides for the Virtual Classroom

Presented by Roger Courville
15.30 – 16.30 GMT (UK time)

In a recent 1080 Group poll, presenters noted their top two challenges with presentations “too little time to put together presentations”, and “don’t know as much about design as I’d like”. The good news is that moving beyond “death by bullet point” doesn’t have to be hard or take over your life.

Once again, as in a previous session there was a lot of ‘being talked at’. There were also a number of questions that Roger asked that seemed to exist for no other reason to show us that he knew something that we didn’t?

Perhaps I’m just a bit thick, but I have no idea what the findings were of a report that I’ve never read on a subject that I’m not familiar with.

I’ll make sure that I bear this in mind when I’m asking questions in my online sessions.

Overall experience

Today was a great experience, I acquired some info in every single session, particularly in terms of varying facilitation methods. There were a number of people who attended every session so to a degree my concern over ‘overload’ may be mute… however, I’m not sure that the audience is typical of the majority of learners – after all, it’s our field!

I’m still doubtful that a days worth of online activities could work in the ‘real world’….

What do you think?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/12/virtual-learning-show-day-2/feed/15Virtual Learning Show Day 1http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/virtual-learning-show-day-1/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/virtual-learning-show-day-1/#commentsThu, 29 Nov 2012 16:16:50 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2742As mentioned in a previous blog post, I recently attended Day 1 of a 2-day Virtual Learning Show. I thought I’d take the opportunity to post some reflections on Day 1 and in particular each session, with a particular focus on:

A key ‘take-away’ from the sessions content itself

The way in which it was facilitated (in part or in whole) with a view to what can I re-use/build upon for myself.

Keynote:

Presented by Colin Steed
10.30 – 11.00 GMT (UK time)

The Virtual Learning Show organiser and leading authority of live online learning Colin Steed welcomes you all to this unique event.

During his Keynote, Colin will take you through the current state of play in the adoption of live online learning in the UK and Europe, the main barriers that we are facing, and five trends fueling the virtual classroom revolution.

Don’t be afraid of skipping ahead if time is short. Colin chose which slides to drop and then cracked on with the content. A good reminder to be cut-throat with timings / content.

How to move your company webinars from enraging to engaging

Presented by Donald H Taylor
11.00 – 12.00 GMT (UK time)

Webinars are getting a bad name. Why? Because they are too often dull knowledge dumps, a tedious background of noise while you clear your inbox. But they needn’t be like that. According to Donald H Taylor, chairman of the Learning and Performance Institute and veteran of several hundred webinars, they can be very engaging – if done right.

Join Don as he examines the gap between what people say about synchronous online events and the reality. We’ll look at the simple tricks needed to make webinars engaging and consider whether everyone can run a good event online.

The difference between a ‘webinar’ and live online training

Delegate momentum, and why polls are often a bad idea

Ensuring interactivity in your events

The six key roles in an online event

Your next steps back in the office

My key content take-away

Ask an open question early, VERY EARLY, possibly even on the second slide. It sets the scene and expectations for your learners.

My key facilitation take-away

Don’t be afraid of silence. When asking a question SHUT UP and give people the time to think and respond.

Regularly acknowledge comments in the chat panel.

Using Storytelling in the Virtual Classroom

Presented by Roger Courville
12.30 – 13.30 GMT (UK time)

Brain research confirms what storytellers know from experience: we learn through storytelling. What’s more, we’re wired for it… we learn the pattern, rhythm and structure of storytelling before we learn the rhythms and patterns of written stories. Our job in learning and development is to impart knowledge and skills to create change, and while we don’t abandon facts, data, and processes, adding storytelling to the mix in the virtual classroom will add a powerful dimension to your success.

Join Roger Courville, of TheVirtualPresenter.com, and get ready to take some notes as you learn practical tips for how to construct story and take full advantage of delivering them in the virtual classroom.

Join us for this interactive live webinar to learn:

What story is (hint: it’s not “once upon a time”)

How to choose the story or illustration right for you

Three steps to transforming story for virtual classrooms

Four tips for uniquely combining voice and visuals for improved impact

My key content take-away

If I’m honest, this session flew along so quickly due to the late start that I really can’t recall any of it, so I can’t say what parts of the content I can ‘take away’.

My key facilitation take-away

Roger was approximately 30 minutes late due to t’internet outage in Oregon, however the other facilitators stepped up to the mark and very quickly facilitated and promoted a number of quick fire Q&As via the chat panel. Because the questions were relevant, there was still a level of ‘conversation’ taking place, handy to have this in the back of my mind should things ever go belly up in one of my sessions.

Convincing Management to Invest in Live Online Learning

Presented by Karen Hyder
14.00 – 15.00 GMT (UK time)

While the benefits of virtual classroom training using tools such as WebEx, Adobe Connect and GoTo Training may be obvious to you and your learners, your managers aren’t sold. They feel face-to-face training is the only way to control the learning experience and that the transition to online learning will be too difficult. They’ve seen too many boring webinars where participants multi-task throughout and they believe that an attempt to move training online will be a waste of time and resources.

In 2010, 88% of eLearning Guild’s survey respondents agreed that” when setup and use properly, online training was as effective as good face-to-face training.” Attend this session to experience what it takes to set up and use virtual classroom tools properly.

Discuss ways to maximize the advantages and overcome the objections of virtual classroom delivery

Identify key considerations for managers and plan what you’ll do and say to make your case for moving your training online.

My key content take-away

Comparison of webinar / virtual classroom tools is difficult due to keeping up with the rapid development of these tools. This Wiki page is a well maintained comparison of web conferencing software.

My key facilitation take-away

Karen used the chat ‘pod’ feature within Adobe Connect which allowed her to separate specific conversations from the backchannel ‘waffle’. I like the idea of this and would be keen to see if there is a way ‘post session’ to match the questions up with the relevant ‘chat pod’.

Using Performance Support to Enhance the Virtual Classroom

Presented by Bob Mosher
15.30 – 16.30 GMT (UK time)

The virtual classroom is becoming commonplace. It offers many wonderful enhancements to the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom. The elimination of travel, the integration into the workflow, and its ability to take advantage of space learning are three wonderful advantages of this emerging medium. The danger lies in the content and context lost over time. Performance support can be the tie that binds bringing everything together and enabling knowledge transfer at a level rarely seen before.

This session will explore a new distance-learning model which encompasses performance support as a critical part of the journey.

In this session we will explore:

The GEAR four step approach to distance learning

How to design performance support to optimize space learning

What instructors need to do to guarantee engagement

My key content take-away

Introduce Performance Support tools EARLY, don’t introduce it ‘afterwards’. Make them a part of our formal programmes, upfront of when people are having to use them for real

My key facilitation take-away

Bob used quick and dirty techniques for marking up or annotating his slides during the session. This was in stark contrast to the clinical design of the slides. This worked really well and helped the annotations to stand out.

Overall experience

Today was a great experience, I acquired some info in every single session. There were a number of people who attended every session so to a degree my concern over ‘overload’ may be mute… however, I’m not sure that the audience is typical of the majority of learners – after all, it’s our field!

I’m still doubtful that a days worth of online activities could work in the ‘real world’….

The titles and content of the sessions interest me (although I’ve been let down in the past in the gap between what was promised in a synopsis and what was delivered in the event itself)

I’m interested to see ‘how’ some of the ‘big names‘ facilitate their sessions as I’m always up for stealing a few ideas!

If I’m brutally honest though, what I’m really interested in is whether it’s feasible to run a days worth of online sessions. Admittedly they’re not back-to-back sessions, but my experience in the past has always been that of my ‘attention wandering’ towards the end of an hours session…..

How will I cope with multiple sessions over a day?

Am I the only one who finds even the *best* online sessions difficult to engage with beyond 45 mins?

I guess I’ll find out tomorrow…..

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/2734/feed/16What happens on my way to work….http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/what-happens-on-my-way-to-work/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/what-happens-on-my-way-to-work/#commentsSat, 17 Nov 2012 20:23:56 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2728Since I started work in my new Organisation, I’ve facilitated a few Lunch & Learn sessions on the subject (unsurprisingly) of using technology to enhance and enrich what the HR team offer and how they offer it.

One of my sessions included this much publicised infographic

What happens in an internet minute

which generated a great deal of surprise and in turn, discussion – Great!

Prior to facilitating the session for the second time (I facilitate each session twice to hopefully attract as many attendees as possible) I reflected on the fact that the infographic references a ‘minute'; a period of time we are all familiar with, but one that let’s be honest is a bit too ‘abstract’ to the majority of people.

I then decided to approach the ‘time’ aspect with something that many people will be all-too-familiar with – the time it takes to commute to work.

Here’s a video that I put together to help to illustrate just how much is taking place on the t’internet as we all travel work (and on this particular occasion during my 38 minute daily cycle commute to work)

I’m not overly happy with the angle of the video, but to be honest it was a Flip camera ‘masking taped’ to my cycling to my helmet so I guess I should be happy that it didn’t fall off mid-commute!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/what-happens-on-my-way-to-work/feed/12What happened in Vegas, won’t stay in Vegas – thanks to #Devlearnhttp://tayloringit.com/2012/11/what-happened-in-vegas-wont-stay-in-vegas-thanks-to-devlearn/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/what-happened-in-vegas-wont-stay-in-vegas-thanks-to-devlearn/#commentsSun, 04 Nov 2012 14:27:44 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2680I’ve spent the best part of last week in Las Vegas attending DevLearn 2012, so as is customary, I thought I’d provide you with a run-down of the sessions I attended but more importantly, the actions and key points of each session that stuck in my head that I feel are of benefit to the work I am doing now and anticipate being involved in in the future.

When I asked Clarke what common pitfalls he sees organisations fall into when devising their L&D content strategies, he informed us all that centering on ‘courses’ was the biggest pitfall he observes. This was a timely response for me as I am about to get involved in writing my Organisations L&D strategy. It had certainly never been my intention to centre on ‘courses’ within the strategy, however I’m sure that having the advice of Clarke on my side will come in very useful, should we hit any ‘problems’ during it’s creation.

My action: Take extreme care when developing my Organisation’s L&D strategy to steer clear of making any suggestions that ‘courses’ will be the default learning solution.

John informed us James Cameron never writes a script with ‘what’s technically possible‘ in mind, with that ringing in our ears he suggested that we write our business plans with that mantra in mind. Oh, and I won a signed DVD from him…

A copy of Titanic signed by John Landau

My action: This “don’t write for what is possible ‘today'” concept is something that I intend to weave into my Organisations L&D strategy.

An interesting piece of research was discussed during Ruth’s session in which it was shown that a ‘simple’ piece of learning content faired better in terms of achieving the learning outcomes than a ‘complicated’ piece of content. This may seem like an obvious answer to many readers, however Ruth then revealed that when the learners involved in the research were asked to reveal which of the two activities they preferred, the more ‘complicated’ piece of content faired better. I believe this should act as a reminder to us to balance achieving the learning outcomes with delivering what the learner ‘likes’ (and the whole issue of ‘learner engagement’ that comes with that)

Ruth Clarke discussing research into many common myths and questions

My action: Continue with my mantra (which is echoed by Clark Quinn) of “what’s the least I can do for you“

This session was waaaay to advanced for the likes of me with my Flipcam and iPhone with a great many references to high end cameras, specialist lighting and editing software. There were some good tips on how Mark had developed characters for his series of videos and his use of humour as well as the mantra ‘tell a story…. always tell a story‘!

My action: Review my organisations usage of video in the coming months and determine whether the small hand-held ‘Flip-cam-esque’ cameras are suitable for our needs or whether an upgrade to a DSLR would be advisable.

I’ve been tinkering around with iBooks Author for a little while writing a book and had been able to get to grips with almost all it’s functionality, however the ‘HTML 5′ widget has had me stumped!

Fortunately, Jason had been working with iBooks for some time and had discovered a tool called Hype (Mac only) which seemed to provide a very simple and intuitive way of creating HTML 5 animations that allowed direct exporting to iBooks. On a few occasions a few technical minded attendees asked some quite technical questions, which to his credit, he swiftly answered but reminded people that this was an intro to Hype and iBooks and quickly got back to the focus of the session.

The opening slide from Jason’s session

My action: Purchase Hype to allow my exploration of iBooks to continue, with a view to offering some organisational resources via iTunes U. Look into gaining access to an area of my Organisations server so as to trial pushing mobile web content to iPads.

As ‘good-an-idea’ as the Morning Buzz (0715-0815) sessions are, I guess they are always going to have to do battle with the desire to have a lie-in, add to the equation that this was the morning after an almighty Las Vegas Halloween party and that probably explains why there were only a small number of attendees at this session.

The session took the form of an informal conversation with each of us swapping compliance war stories. Neil suggested that we reaaaaaallllly do some digging with our external regulators to fully understand ‘The Rules’, as opposed to guessing what is expected of us or taking our compliance department’s word for it. He also provided a novel insight into a piece of work he had been asked to undertake around ‘anti-money laundering’. Neil took an antagonists approach to this subject and developed a resource more aligned with ‘How To Launder Money’. This approach initially proved controversial, however Neil assured us that over time it began to have the desired behavioural impact.

My action: Set up a meeting with our designated external regulator to discuss ‘The Rules’. Consider taking the antagonists approach, the next time I produce any material(s).

Google talked to us about their SalesPro+ platform and how they have moved away from what we might call ‘traditional click next’ elearning to a collaborative, games-based approach. This approach resonated with me as I have been mulling over ‘free text’ assessments for a little while now as part of a project I am involved in. I had been worried about taking this approach as I was concerned about the time it would take to assess and provide feedback to free text submissions compared to multiple-guess assessments being marked by SCORM / LMS (this ain’t gonna happen!)

Fortunately Google were able to put my mind at rest as they had been taking approx 2 hours a week to review, assess and feed back on the free text assessments for an audience of approx 700 people.

Google SalesPro+ reflective essay slide

My action: Step up my plans to include free text assessments should they work out being the best form of assessment for my upcoming project.

A great dynamic session here involving a ‘panel discussion’ with several members of the panel being physically there in person, 1 Skyping in and one participating via Twitter all answering questions relating to the emergence and usage of ‘new’ Tech. There were a number of pre-prepared questions along with the opportunity for people to ‘Tweet in’ relevant questions as well as traditonal ‘questions from the floor.

The Godesses of elearning in action both in person and online

My action: Discuss this option with a colleague of mine in our Internal Comms team as a way of bringing more people into the regular Q&A sessions with our MD.

I love watching Alicia speak as she has a great way of combining her vast knowledge in this area with great facilitation skills and a sharp sense of humour. Whilst I’m not a fan of the word ‘Gamification’ it was still very worthwhile attending to gain a perspective on how others have been using gaming mechanics to increase engagement and ‘stickiness’ of resources.

Alicia facilitating her session

My action: Identify examples of where gaming mechanics have been used for L&D activities that are NOT enclosed within self-paced, click next tutorials. Consider a games-based learning session for the Lunch and Learn sessions that I facilitate.

I had been looking forward to attending this session however after about 10 minutes one of the speakers suggested conducting an organisation-wide Learning Styles survey…. I took this as my cue to leave and move to….

A series of Ignite presentations across a range of topical subjects. I found myself wanting to hear more from some of the participants, so was naturally frustrated at the 5 minute air time that Ignite rules provides them. In particular Jane Bozarth encouraged us to ‘Show Your Work’ a subject that I’d be keen to hear more from Jane about…… who knows…. perhaps she’s planning to tell us more…..

My action: Include Ignite into a future Lunch and Learn session I am planning on ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points’

I hadn’t planned to attend Lisa’s session, however once I saw that it was directly next to the room that I was due to be facilitating my session in 1 hour later (and was currently in use) I decided to pop in, join in the conversation and say “Hi” to Lisa, who I have been having conversations with on Twitter for some time, but have never had the good fortune to meet. Lisa was facilitating a (large) group conversation around the challenges of being a 1-person L&D team. Some great pieces of advice were passed around, but for me the piece that really hit home (even though I’m not in a 1-person L&D team), was the reminder that we can only do 1 thing at a time, that sometimes work needs to be pushed back, that sometimes we need to learn/remember to say “No“.

My action: Feel comfortable with saying “No”. Promote the Twitter hashtag – #1PDept – to ensure that the small group that formed during that morning session can grow in size and can benefit from a wider audience. 1-person teams can be tough enough, so if you feel that you can offer some insights or even of you fall into that category, why not search them out on Twitter?

My session served as a timely reminder that people / organisations are at different points in their journey of understanding / adopting mobile technologies. The audience were fantastic and very forthcoming in asking questions, providing responses and generally getting stuck in!

What did surprise me, was the fact that approximately 30 minutes into the session I announced the practical element of the session and informed people that they were to break down into groups and use a mobile device to create a piece of content, push it to Twitter using the event # and then we could all consume the content via our mobile devices – at this stage approx 5 people stood up and walked out of the session?!?! To this day I have no idea why, however I do know that many people commented on how much they enjoyed the practical element of the session and saw it as a refreshing change to some of the other ‘info only’ sessions that they had attended.

My action(s): Send slides to the eLearning Guild for publication on the event resources page. Upload slides to Slideshare. Create Slidecast on Slideshare, so verbal context is not lost.

All to frequently hear the cry “but how do we know Social Media adds value, blah, blah, blah” so I was keen to see and hear what Jane had to say. Jane ran a wonderful session which from my perspective, centered around a story in which Jane had used Twitter to crowdsource an answer to question. Jane has blogged about this example in detail and I would encourage you to take a look at it, in particular the ‘Value Creation’ table shown in Figure 1.

Jane Bozarth discussing measuring the value of social learning.

My action: Re-read the article that I referred you to above. Discuss with my boss as to whether the Value Creation table could be applied as an evaluation method to all our L&D activities and not just those that center around ‘communities’.

Overall conference observations / take aways

Good to see the conference and exhibition being co-located avoiding the ‘upstairs, downstairs‘ that has been mentioned before. It also makes life a damn site easier for attendees.

The mobile app was extremely useful and became my real ‘workhorse’ during the conference and indeed before it actually started. I would have liked to have seen the inbuilt Twitter function with a greater degree of functionality i.e. RTs, DMs, attaching images, following people etc – however having said that the fact the app overall was very impressive and I’d like to see something of this standard at UK conferences. (if any UK conference organisers want my app login details to fully explore it, then please get in touch)

The Conference staff all wore eLearning Guild branded sky-blue(ish) shirts/tops which massively helped attendees in terms of being able to know who to ask for help.

I went to some trouble to ensure that the phrases, stories and examples that I used were ‘non-UK’ specific and were therefore more likely to be understood by an International audience. Unfortunately not every speaker went to this trouble, resulting on a number of occasions with me spending valuable time trying to Google/understand the context that they were talking about – time that would have been better spent listening to / watching the facilitator. Perhaps the eLearning Guild could be more explicit about asking future Devlearn facilitators to consider this?

The conference badge holders were actually little ‘around the neck’ bags (see first image in this post) that not only allowed you to display your conference badge, but also had a small zipped section to store business cards, a pen, some money. A simple little thing, but one that made a difference.

The morning buzz sessions are 0715-0815 sessions designed for the early riser (or like me, the jet-lagged). The sessions that I attended were very informal, had a small number of attendees and were very much geared towards having conversations with like-minded people around a given subject. I thought it was a great way of maximising the time of the conference and an idea that I’d certainly buy into, should they ever make an appearance at UK conferences.

The conference was much less formal than others I have attended, which in my opinion, provided a much more ‘friendly’ and welcoming atmosphere. You had to look hard to spot somebody NOT in jeans/casual dress! I don’t believe that this dress code effected anybody’s morale or motivation…..

If any of the overviews that I’ve provided above make you curious for more info, why not check out the backchannel or drop me a below?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/11/what-happened-in-vegas-wont-stay-in-vegas-thanks-to-devlearn/feed/17I’m off to #DevLearn – would you like to come with me?http://tayloringit.com/2012/10/im-off-to-devlearn-would-you-like-to-come-with-me/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/10/im-off-to-devlearn-would-you-like-to-come-with-me/#commentsSun, 28 Oct 2012 09:09:35 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2666

Question mark made out of coloured poins on a cork board

Weeeeeell not exactly come *with* me, more of a ‘would you like me to ask any questions on your behalf whilst I’m there‘ (let’s be honest, you probably wouldn’t enjoy it and I’m sure you’ve got better things to be doing next week)

Why not take a look at the sessions I’m attending and let know via the comments section below (please include the hashtag #DevLearn) if there’s anything you’d like me to enquire about on your behalf.

Of course I can’t promise to ask every question or indeed guarantee a reply, but I’ll do what I can….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/10/im-off-to-devlearn-would-you-like-to-come-with-me/feed/0Corporate Vs Creativity (why the Vs?)http://tayloringit.com/2012/10/corporate-vs-creativity-why-the-vs/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/10/corporate-vs-creativity-why-the-vs/#commentsFri, 05 Oct 2012 07:10:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2649A little while ago, I engaged in a passing conversation in which the subjects of ‘corporate’ and ‘creativity’ were described as being some distance apart, this explanation was backed up by a physical demonstration of that point and that it was extremely difficult for the 2 to exist in the same place.

At the time I dumbly nodded, but later that day during my bike ride home (this is my new ‘time for my best ideas’ time) it dawned on me that I was wrong to have ‘dumbly nodded’ as I certainly don’t believe that corporate and creativity have to exist in separate places and that it needs an ‘Act Of ‘ for the 2 to co-exist.

Perhaps instead of dumbly nodding I should have mentioned

Google
Facebook
Apple
Lego

because let’s be honest, they’re corporates, they’re creative and let’s be honest, they’re not doing too badly for themselves!!!!

Can you think of any other corporates who have been able to balance things?

Do you have any heartwarming/horror stories of your own, where the balance has been made/not made?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/10/corporate-vs-creativity-why-the-vs/feed/2I’m speaking at #DevLearn 12…http://tayloringit.com/2012/09/im-speaking-at-devlearn-12/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/09/im-speaking-at-devlearn-12/#commentsSat, 29 Sep 2012 18:55:24 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2640It appears that US conferences have a slightly different view of accepting vendors as speakers compared with the UK conference circuit, which meant that following my submission of a proposal to speak at DevLearn 2012 I was pleasantly surprised to be accepted as a speaker at this years conference. (note: I am no longer working within a vendor environment, but fortunately my new employer is supporting me in meeting my commitment and of course to attend the wider conference activities).

Of course I’m excited to speaking at such a renowned conference but I have to admit that I’m more than a little intrigued by Neil Lasher’s blog post comparing the US to the UK conference circuit – I guess I’ll be able to take a look for myself soon!

In preparation for my session, I’ve put together a short video that I’m hoping attendees will watch prior to attending the session (previous experience at an eLN event demonstrated that the take-up of this approach was woefully low!) therefore maximising the precious face-to-face that we will have during the session. In the meantime, why not take look at the video yourself (it’s the first movie I’ve created on my Macbook using iMovie) and leave your responses in the comments section below.

Craig is joined by @zakmensah for the second in a series of podcasts in which Zak helps to make sense of the whole ebooks subject. If you’ve got any questions for Zak relating to this subject, then please feel free to raise them in the comments section below.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/09/podcast-25-books-and-ebooks-part-2/feed/0Designing #mlearning Book Review – Chapter 6http://tayloringit.com/2012/09/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-6/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/09/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-6/#commentsMon, 10 Sep 2012 08:30:42 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2409As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 6 – Getting Concrete

This chapter provides an insight into several real-world, concrete examples which demonstrate a range of mlearning possibilities and applications, each of them following this template. (which with a little tweaking, would make a nice business case template)

The organisation: Who was involved?

The challenge: What was the need?

Why mobile: What made mobile a solution?

Making the case: How was the solution presented?

The solution: What was actually done?

The benefits: What was expected?

The results: What was observed?

Lessons learned: What recommendations came out of this project?

There were an impressive number of examples in this chapter and I won’t spoil your future reading by going into each one, however what I will highlight is a few surprises that some of these case studies held for me?

I had always assumed that Blackberry was a particularly crappy platform to develop for and in turn deliver content via, this assumption was based upon the low number of apps available for BB and the teeth-sucking and eye-rolling that took place whenever BB development was suggested to some former colleauges. This chapter helped to reshape my perceptions of what can be achieved via BB as a result of reading a case study which centered around the delivery of pharmaceutical sales training and performance support to field sales teams utilising their BB Bold 9000 and 9700 devices. This reshaping of my BB expectations will certainly be of use to me on in my new role within an organisation whose mobile solutions at this moment in time, is BB.

Reading many of these case studies also brought to light just how long many people/organisations/vendors have been developing mobile solutions (as we might define them today) with Hybrid Learning Systems developing XML SCORM compliant mobile solutions in 2006 – that’s 6 years ago folks!

There are no questions being posed at the end of this chapter, which was a little disappointing as I found that in previous chapters they had helped to focus my thoughts and gave me an opportunity to openly reflect and share.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/09/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-6/feed/1Podcast #24: Books and ebookshttp://tayloringit.com/2012/08/podcast-24-books-and-ebooks/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/08/podcast-24-books-and-ebooks/#commentsWed, 29 Aug 2012 15:43:52 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2590Craig is joined by @zakmensah for the first in a series of podcasts in which Zak helps to make sense of the whole ebooks subject. If you’ve got any questions for Zak relating to this subject, then please feel free to raise them in the comments section below.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/08/podcast-24-books-and-ebooks/feed/1Thinglinkhttp://tayloringit.com/2012/08/thinglink/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/08/thinglink/#commentsTue, 28 Aug 2012 15:46:39 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2593Regular readers will know that I’m an advocate of maximising the technologies that we already have at our disposal, I’ve even facilitated some online and f2f sessions around this subject in which I encouraged people to look under the bonnet of the tools and platforms that they already had.

One of the tools whose ‘hidden functionality‘ I’ve discussed in the past is Flickr’s ability for people to be able to add ‘hotspots’ to images and then add text to those hotspots, here’s an example. Whilst this is a great idea, the fact that you have to be logged in to the Flickr account where the image is hosted in order to be able to add the annotations is something of a drawback, add to this the fact that when you then embed the ‘tagged’ image away from Flickr, the hotspots disappear and you have a limiting platform….

Once you have tagged these images, you can them embed them within a blog, site, intranet, LMS, VLE etc aaaaaand allow others to add tags too (if you so wish) – no more having to share Flickr account login details with others.

Here’s one I prepared earlier. I’ve made it editable so please feel free to add some annotations, links, videos etc of your own.

How might you be able to use this platform within your own organisation?

I’ve just spent the best part of 24 hours, hunting for a WordPress HTML5 audio player, wrestling with its incompatibility with the Jetpack WordPress plugin and then finally trawling my way through my blog history converting my audio player from Flash to HTML5 for all 23 podcasts to date.

Admittedly when I first started blogging and podcasting, the whole Flash Vs HTML5 debate either didn’t exist, or it was very much in its infancy, either way I have to admit that I didn’t really know what the hell it was all about, so ignorance/naivety probably played a significant in my decision to opt for a Flash based audio player for my podcasts.

However since owning an iPad and having an iPhone as a work phone, I have discovered how inaccessible my podcasts have been to other people using iOS devices, hence my decision to spend some time this weekend overhauling my podcasting process and infrastructure.

I also took the opportunity to change my podcast feed from Feedburner to Jellycast (because I’d basically ‘ballsed up’ the previous feed up completely!).

What does all of this mean?

Well it means that all of my previous podcasts are now visible in iTunes

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 5 – Getting Contextual

We start this chapter off with the statement “content may be king, but context rules“, which provides a nice stepping stone into a number of examples that Clark provides to show what others have done to take advantage of mobile capabilities, via some concrete examples as opposed to abstract principles and possibilities.

We start off with an example from within the formal K12 education sector in which it was identified that laptops were the wrong form factor for children’s little hands so Elliot Soloway started developing software for the much more ‘form factor friendly’ PDAs to support note-taking, collecting and the sharing of data, whilst elsewhere the portability of mobile devices has supported children in conducting out-of-class experiments.

We then skip forward to Higher Ed and look at how students are accessing course management information such as schedules, syllabi and assignments from their mobile devices as well as accessing online recordings of lectures. The are a few interesting examples of educational establishments providing iPods, iPhones and iPod Touches to students (with varying degrees of success), which has regenerated my thinking around providing low-cost devices (I’m thinking iPod touches) within businesses to facilitate the uptake of mobile device usage.

We naturally progress onto Organisational uses of mobile devices, where Clark promises us some case studies in the next chapter, but for now we are reminded of the use of handheld scanners for stock control, data tracking, healthcare data provision, a drug trial in Canada using Blackberries to remind subjects to take their medication and finally the perhaps most recognised use within businesses, of employees connecting with Enterprise-wide contacts and calendars.

We finish off the chapter with these questions being posed (along with my responses):

What examples of mobile use have you seen that can provide models for what you might try?

A few weeks ago I attended an eLearning Network event during which I observed a demonstration of a native app ‘shell’ that allowed content (of pretty much any file type I think) to be contained within it. For me the real ‘wow’ factor of this was the fact that access to each piece of content could be set to activate upon arrival at a physical location as opposed to having everything ‘on show’, this led to me to start thinking about whether it would be possible for the content to be activated as a result of other factors i.e. those that have been mentioned in this mindmap that was produced last year. All I need now is an opportunity to put this into practice!

What barriers do you face in your context, and what possible solutions have others found?

As a vendor, one of the biggest barriers I face in my role, is the client perception that mobile learning is ‘shrunken down’ desktop learning. I attempt to overcome this perception by demonstrating ‘best use’ examples of mobile devices and even challenge/question the client as to how they use their mobile device to support themselves in both their personal and professional lives. This usually leads to an interesting conversation that highlights that ‘shrunken down’ desktop learning didn’t figure in their response. I won’t say that this approach works all of the time, or even most of the time, however I’m sure it provides food for thought……

So folks,, why not take a look at the questions above and provide your own responses in the comments below?

Regular readers of my blog and social media followers will know that I’m not a huge fan of click-next, self-paced eLearning. Sure, there’s a time to wrap the whole learning experience up in a SCORM object, bury it deep within a Learning Management System and track the bejesus out of everything. (When I say everything, of course I’m not actually referring to whether the learner has been able to synthesise the content and has an ability to recreate it in the real world and the subsequent business impact, I’m actualy talking out who did it, when they did it, what score they attained, whether they ‘passed‘ and lets be honest about this; how good their short term memory is!).

The time being when an organisation needs to tick a box and cover their asses to prove that ‘training’ was provided to a learner, the place being (alas) most organisations. (I’ve just re-read the text above and realised I’m going off on one again, so I’ll get back on track…)

Given my interest in technology however, I’ve always been intrigued and surprised at just how overlooked the intranet is in many organisations, in terms of being able to deliver support in a way that is no doubt far more in people’s ‘workflows’ than an LMS is!

It’s this fascination with how under utilised intranets tend to be, that led to me volunteering to facilitate a number of scoping workshops in a previous organisation when the decision was made to overhaul its intranet offering.

Being a global organisation those workshops took place at each location with the same questions being asked of each group.

Below is the Google Doc that I produced to present the outcomes of the scoping workshop that I conducted, I hope you find the questions that were asked to be of use to you if you are considering developing your own intranet platform. As you can see very few of the questions actually refer to an ‘intranet’ at all, but instead ask how people work, the types of info they require, the media that info is presented in etc

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/07/intranet-scoping/feed/3There’s more than your top lip under your nose…http://tayloringit.com/2012/07/theres-more-than-your-top-lip-under-your-nose/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/07/theres-more-than-your-top-lip-under-your-nose/#commentsThu, 12 Jul 2012 07:19:23 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2293Earlier this week I commenced an online programme, devised and facilitated by Google on, well, using Google! In particular Google Search.

The purpose of this blog post isn’t to review the programme as a number of other people including Jay Cross and John Curran are already doing that, although I will say that I disagree with John to a degree over his comments on the decor of the room that that facilitator is being filmed in and the quality of the Google Presentation slides (not PowerPoint). For me the content of this particular programme is what interests me, not the aesthetics. I guess you could say that from a ‘care curve‘ perspective, I ‘care’ enough about the content/substance to overlook the aesthetics/style.

The trigger for this blog post has been the realisation or maybe a re-realisation of how much we overlook the everyday things, the things that are under our nose, the things that we take for granted.

None of the tools/techniques that have been revealed in the programme so far are ‘hidden away’, none of them require you to dive into the settings or to hack your way around the ‘accepted’ way of doing things!

They have been right there, hiding in plain sight, under my nose, under your nose!

This got me thinking about what else we overlook in our lives that we could use to enhance our or others learning. It’s a tricky question as I’m obviously asking myself to know what I don’t know – a tricky feat, but I am going to make more of a conscious effort to look more closely at the tools/platforms/devices etc that I am using and see if I’m missing anything.

What about you?

Do you have any example of where you have missed a blatant opportunity to use a functionality/approach/method that was staring you in the face?

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 4 – The technology it’s not about

We start this chapter with a nod to the fact that the iPad (1) was announced during the writing of this book. Given that this is still considered a ‘recent’ book, this shows very clearly how dynamic this market is.

From looking forward we take a look back at a brief history of mobile devices commencing at the Palm Pilot, skipping ahead to mobile phones, through media players to smartphones. From there we review the advent of handheld games, tablets and recording devices, before acknowledging that by the time many readers pick up this book some of the descriptions will already be out of date.

We then take a look at a trend that gives a fairly clear indication of how things are going at the moment – “convergence”. More and more devices are providing a 1-stop shop for much (if not all) of the functionality that we used to associate with multiple devices.

Towards the end of the chapter we are reminded just how quickly this field is developing as Clark suggests that we may even be moving towards wearing glasses with a Heads Up Display – imagine that!

We finish off the chapter with these questions being posed (along with my responses):

How can you take advantage of any of the dedicated devices (media player, camera, PDA, phone)?

I’m not sure that we really need to go out of our way to take advantage of the plethora of dedicated devices, after all our learners are already using them within their day-to-day lives to take pictures, record video, access the web, read novels etc. Given that dedicated devices are in my opinion “High Street” what I think we need to do is to tap into learner’s familiarity with them and start to drip-feed examples of how they can use them within a workplace environment. Why not model some good examples using dedicated devices? Often when I facilitate face-to-face activities, I make a point of recording audio feedback, video voxpops and photographs of interactivity using dedicated devices in order to model good practice for the attendees to (hopefully) follow.

How can you capitalize the increasing ubiquity of the converged devices?

Let’s be honest most organisations (even now) are not providing converged devices (read phones and tablets) to support learning programmes or ‘overtly’ to maximise performance. I believe they are providing them so that you have little or no excuse for not responding to emails! But let’s not let this worry us, instead let’s leverage the growing distribution of mobile devices for our own ends and start to offer resources, assets etc that can benefit from the functionality of the converged device.

Have you considered the tradeoffs of providing (devices) versus supporting devices ?

I guess the provision of devices ensures (to a certain degree) greater control and in turn ‘peace of mind’ (wrongly in my opinion) to organisations, but hey, if it increases the chances of mobile uptake then maybe it’s worth it? Of course, this approach no doubt brings significant expense with it in terms of providing the devices, however I’ve no doubt that it is easier to support 1 x device type as opposed to trying to support learners own devices. Of course allowing learners to use their own device means that they will be familiar with it and therefore more likely to use it and quite possibly less likely to need support, although the cost and logistics involved in trying to support multiple device types cannot be ignored.

So folks, why not take a look at the questions above and provide your own responses in the comments below?

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 3 – A brief history of learning and cognition

Confession time!

I’ve struggled somewhat with this chapter, having had to read it 3 or 4 times in order to be able to internally process its content for this review. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing at all, but it did feel a little awkward for me having breezed through the first 2 chapters and seeing them as confirmation of my current thinking.

In chapter 3 Clark starts off by reminding us (I’m liking the fact that he is drumming this into the reader) that mLearning is, by and large, not about learning, but about augmentation. About letting us as human beings get on with what our brains do well and providing support for what our brains struggle with (rote learning), rather than trying to ‘drill’ the information into our/others heads! Let the mobile device remember the facts and allow yourself to make decisions or detect nuances in the many variables we base our decisions every day.

In case we haven’t got the point yet, he reminds us that mLearning is not about putting courses on a phone (I’m hoping he raises this point again, as it seems to be something of a common misconception in my opinion)

Clarke then takes us on a whistle-stop tour of media psychology, that I’ve got to be honest, wasn’t any clearer on the 4th reading as it was on the 1st – perhaps I’m not of the target academic demographic for this book, perhaps I’m reading it at the wrong time of day; I don’t know. What I’m hoping is that this lack of comprehension doesn’t impact upon my understanding of the rest of the book….. we’ll see….

We finish off the chapter with these questions being posed (along with my responses):

Are you considering more than just courses and including performance support?

As a member of the vendor community, I have seen a fairly respectable number of mobile solutions being provided to clients and I have to say that the vast majority fall into the ‘course on a phone/tablet’ category. We could go into the whole “who’s to blame for this?” debate, that we’ve all no doubt contributed to in some way, shape or form in the past, but on this occasion I’m not going to, maybe you’d like to in the comments section? What I will say is that I’ve seen a few good examples of performance support apps for the NHS (detailing drug dose calculations) and for some areas of retail (providing ‘just-in-time’ support for a new season range of products), as yet I’ve still to see any solutions that make use of the phones native functionality.

I think the answer above goes somewhere towards answering this question. Some organisations are obviously only seeing mobile as a portable desktop solution, whilst others are grasping the potential for it to ‘augment’ their people. I’d say that it’s probably (based upon a Sophisticated Wild Arsed Guess) less than 3% who have spotted this.

Do you include social learning as part of your learning solution?

I’ve seen a growing number of clients who are currently/planning to include social learning as part of their solution. My fear is the assumption that people will flock to it, just because organisations have built it. I also see a number of organisation building internal platforms as opposed to using existing ‘public’ platforms for these conversations to take place. I know from experience in a previous role that the ‘doomers and gloomers’ will cite commercial sensitivity or security for reasons not to engage in ‘public’ conversations and there are a growing number of collaborative platforms to circumvent this, but I can’t help but feel that this approach is only papering over the cracks of a bigger problem.

So folks, why not take a look at the questions above and provide your own responses in the comments below?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/07/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-3/feed/1Designing #mlearning Book Review – Chapter 2http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-2/#commentsThu, 28 Jun 2012 20:02:56 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2232As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

Chapter 2 – The Details

In this chapter Clark shares a small exercise he undertakes when speaking on the subject of mobile devices, in which he allows people to acknowledge that cell phones, PDAs, iPods are ‘mobile learning devices’. I have to say that I’m surprised that there is anybody left on the surface of the planet that wouldn’t recognise those devices as mobile learning devices and wonder whether that is an exercise that may have lost its impact since the publishing of the book?

Some blisteringly high figures are shown as to how many hours a day the average American spend accessing the mobile web (and let’s not forget that these figures are 2-3 years old!!)

Next we take a look at, and dispel, some popular misconceptions around mlearning including (amongst others) such classics as

“we can’t provide mobile devices”

“courses on phones doesn’t seem like a good idea” (the response to which is thankfully used to introduce performance support)

“mlearning is limited to smartphones”

We then take a look at the business case for mobile learning and Clark explains that he believes that it should be the role of the learning function to take on the role of designing mobile performance – a point which I disagree on.

I believe that it should be the function with the clearest understanding of mobile learning and greatest passion to succeed that should take it on. In my previous organisation I spent the last 12 months as a member of the Comms team driving forward the organisations understanding of what mlearning was, wasn’t and how it could add value. I even pitched to the L&D team themselves and was met by some of the misconceptions that are included in this chapter. So I’m far from convinced that L&D should be the only potential champion of this.

We finish off the chapter with these questions being posed (along with my responses):

How many mobile employees are you supporting?

This question raises an interesting point in my mind which is “what is a mobile employee”? Surely, unless you eat, sleep and live in your work environment then you are ‘mobile’? Admittedly there are some roles (such as mine) that have a very overt mobile nature to their role and as such attract the term ‘mobile employee’, but surely we should start to consider the effectiveness and value that all employees can add if they can maximise their mobility? Anyway, to answer the question we deploy 43 smartphones throughout the organisation.

How widely distributed are mobile devices across your employee population?

43 of ‘em, making about 30% distribution.

What are the opportunities for improvement in mobile worker performance?

Being able to complete web forms for various parts of our processes from mobile devices as opposed to Office docs from lap/desktops.

Accessing client data immediately prior to a meeting.

Accessing of network based data via VPN

What are the benefits of mobile access to content for the employee population at large?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-2/feed/8Designing #mLearning Book Review – Chapter 1http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-1/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/designing-mlearning-book-review-chapter-1/#commentsWed, 27 Jun 2012 14:30:32 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2221As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

;

Chapter 1 – Overview

OK, so I’m off to something of a false start here as I’ve just realised that there are no questions asked of ‘The Reader’ at the end of this short introductory chapter, but we are provided with a list of very realistic and pragmatic situations in which a range of ‘everyday’ roles and occupations can/could/do harness the benefits of a mobile device to increase their performance and value.

And guess what?

Only one of the examples is to undertake a compliance ‘course’! This (thankfully) fleeting mention of a ‘course’ provides me with a warm, fuzzy feeling that the rest of the book won’t be trying to convince me of the benefits of shrinking down desktop learning onto a smaller screen.

He also provides us with a definition for mlearning that he admits the eLearning Guild mobile learning research team struggled to come up with:

“Any activity that allows individuals to be more productive when consuming, interacting with, or creating information, mediated through a compact digital portable device that the individual carries on a regular basis, has reliable connectivity, and fits into a pocket or purse”

(eLearning Guild 360 Mobile Learning Research Report, 2007)

He finally reminds us that the pace of change in this area is so fast that any suggested, specific solutions would be unlikely to stand the test of the publishing process time, so instead explains what the book is really about; preparing the reader to take advantage of the mobile revolution.

I’ve always said to myself that I would never write a book review, until the day that I had pored in the (no doubt) significant effort that it would take write a book myself. A sort of ‘who am I to criticise‘ perspective.

That was until this weekend; allow me to explain.

I have been looking for a non-fiction, work-related book to read for some time, to break up the months of fiction reading I have been doing. I started to gravitate towards ‘Designing mlearning‘ by Clark Quinn, however I was out off by one of the 1-star rating comments that had been made. (I tweeted about this experience and since then the book has received 2 x positive reviews). Given that the book was quite expensive for a self-purchase (even on Kindle), I decided to look for something else….

Fortunately for me I popped into work the next day (it was a weekend) and lo-and-behold, it was sitting on our library bookshelf – Result!!

I’ve only got 2-3 chapters into the book, however I have decided to stop reading and start again.

Why?

Well because Clark has very cleverly asked a small number of questions at the end of each chapter, which I think is a great way of providing a period of self-reflection and ‘action planning’ for the reader. So great an idea in fact, that my plan is to write a blog post after each chapter in which I will briefly explain what the chapter covered, but more importantly I’ll answer the very questions (where possible) that Clark asks and will then turn the tables on you ‘Dear Reader’ and ask them of you..

Craig is joined by Lilian Soon for a chat about how we can better utilise than often overlooked tool of text messaging in order to enhance and enrich our learning programmes – and maybe even help our administrators out?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/podcast-23-back-to-basics/feed/5Some upcoming sessionshttp://tayloringit.com/2012/06/some-upcoming-sessions/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/some-upcoming-sessions/#commentsFri, 08 Jun 2012 07:30:15 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2184I’m pleased to say that I’ve got a couple of sessions coming up in July in which I’ll be taking a look at that much hyped phenomena of ‘mobile learning’.

The sessions are almost identical, (with the only changes to design being to cater for the difference in dynamics) however they bring some additional challenges in that

a) 1 of them is face-to-face and the other is online
b) they are less than 24 hours apart

Meaning that it will be a challenge to incorporate any feedback or observations from the first session into the second session, not impossible, but quite possibly a late night is in store!

I have prepared a short video in order to maximise the time during the sessions by asking the attendees to consider 3 questions. If you’re attending either of the sessions (or even if you’re not) then why not view this short video and consider my questions…

If you hover over the video, you’ll notice the ‘scenechat’ toolbar appear at the bottom. Why not leave your responses to my questions using the ‘scenechat’ tool? (I must admit to being quite impressed with this to being with and then it disappointed me by not allowing me to see the ID of the people posting comments, or indeed ID the comments that I made!?)

It’s probably worth me expanding upon the deliberately vague title of this blog post before I go any further.

By ‘this‘ I mean ‘mobile’ learning.

By ‘another‘ I mean as we did all those years ago in the early days of ‘e’ learning. (admittedly I have no personal experience of those days, only anecdotal examples)

By ‘we’ve‘ I mean us in the L&D community. Both within the vendor community and the client community.

So what do I mean by all this?

During a recent meeting with some colleagues, I reflected upon the conversations that I have had with potential clients over the past 6 months with regards to the use of mobile technologies. With a very small exception (probably 2-3 out of approx 60 conversations) those conversations have revolved around the creation of ‘mobile learning’, which actually translated as the “shrinking down of desktop content to allow it to be viewed and interacted with on a mobile device“.

Very little, if any mention, of creating performance support resources…

No consideration of using the devices native functions I.e. camera, keyboard, GPS, voice recorder, to enhance the experience….

A heavy focus on the learner ‘learning‘ something from it, as opposed to the worker ‘enhancing‘ their performance from it (Hell, who needs to learn the London Underground routes if you’ve got the app in your pocket?)

And this is where I think we have got it wrong again!

We have used the blanket phrase ‘m-learning’ to describe the use of mobile devices to facilitate learning. Now to *us*, we acknowledge (at least I hope you do) that this can include using the device to (amongst other things)

Consume traditional self paced click next eLearning (yes of course there is a place for this)

Listen to podcasts

Take pictures of things to help us remember something in the future

Engage in online dialogue conversations with others

Record audio

Determine your proximity

The creation of User Generated Content for others

Call for help!

Of course, with some degree of thought and design the above functions can (and probably should) be incorporated into many (I may even dare to say ‘all’) learning programmes, but in my opinion (based as I said on my conversations with many people on this subject) this simply isn’t the case.

Why?

Well I think the fact that we have used the term ‘m-learning’ which is not a million miles away from the term ‘e-learning’ (which let’s be honest, most people see as being click-next, self-paced stuff) hasn’t helped matters, I think we’ve inadvertently given the impression that it’s traditional eLearning on a mobile device has a part to play in it.

I also think that the recent hysteria over some eLearning authoring products and their ‘mobile readiness’ (which translates as traditional eLearning but outputted to HTML5 or a native app) hasn’t helped matters either

“Ooooo look! I can recreate my traditional self-paced, click-next stuff to work on a mobile device – I must be creating m-learning”

Well technically I have to concede

“Yes. Yes, you are”

but I feel that unless we start to make more noise about the fact that m-learning is more than shrinking down content and actually the ‘learning‘ part of it could well be redundant, we will miss another opportunity to really harness these technologies just as I guess we have done in the past……

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/06/is-this-another-fine-mess-weve-got-ourselves-into/feed/4Back in the ‘speaking saddle’…http://tayloringit.com/2012/04/back-in-the-speaking-saddle/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/04/back-in-the-speaking-saddle/#commentsSat, 21 Apr 2012 05:42:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2149… that’s right folks, despite being a dreaded vendor, I have recently spoken at the UCISA Using Social Media For Training event at the kind invitation of the lovely Gillian Fielding.

Gillian and I met several months ago and discussed potential subjects and settling upon me looking at the use of YouTube, whilst other facilitators delved into other areas.

As always, I’d like to share my ‘take aways’ from the sessions that I attended, as well as the content from within my session.

Sue delivered a great session that I’m sure would have had a HUGE impact on those individuals who were still debating/in the tentative stages of using Social Media. The takeaway for me from this session, wasn’t the content as such, it was the way that Sue delivered that content using Infographics – which Helen Keegan has done a good job of capturing here. Thanks for the inspiration Sue!

I have to be honest here and say that I didn’t enjoy this session. Whilst I understand that there are implications of using Social Media incorrectly and for that very reason it is important to provide a balanced view during an event such as this, I felt that this particular session involved a lot of scaremongering, which I actually tweeted and which attracted quite a few ReTweets

Some scaremongering taking place here. Suggestions that no1 should push boundaries & should wait for 'top down' direction #UCISASoMe

Gillian took us on a whistlestop journey of a recent ‘QR codes’ course that she had facilitated in Facebook and the successes and challenges that this had brought.

We were then asked to discuss whether the constant changes and updates to Facebook (which, unlike an LMS are obviously out of your control) meant that this platform was unsuitable as a VLE/LMS. Having had some time since the event to reflect upon this question, I feel that as long as the changes/updates haven’t lost any content and still allows the learner to interact with that content then it’s not really a big deal.

Let’s be honest, there will be a few reasons why you are choosing to use Facebook and as long as one of those reasons is because that’s where your learners eyes are then the chances are they have already cottoned onto the changes (as happened with the recent Facebook Timeline changes)

Given that it would be somewhat ironic to attempt to do deliver my sessions content without using YouTube coupled with the fact that I only had 30 mins to facilitate my session I decided to record and publish a number of YouTube videos focussing on some ‘less obvious’ uses of YouTube and encourage attendees to view them in advance, interact with them and then use them as a catalyst for conversations during the the f2f session itself – a ‘flipped‘ approach if you will!

My greatest concern over doing this, was that the attendees may not have taken the time to view the content ahead of the session, however of the approx 50 people that attended my session (split over 2 x sessions), only 2 or 3 people had failed to viewed the videos in advance. I’ve no doubt that this was down to the very clear direction provided in the pre-event information.

Here are the videos; I’d recommend clicking through and watching them on YouTube itself, as that way you will be able to read the responses to the videos and more importantly view the video responses that many attendees (and even a few that weren’t attending) took the time to upload.

I even created one on my phone, titled it, tagged it and uploaded it via my phone just prior to my 1st session commencing to show how quickly it can be done, here it is.

Just prior to the event taking place (in fact it was on the train travelling to the event), I discovered a great little trick courtesy of Jane Bozarth’sSocial Media for Trainers book that I unfortunately didn’t get time to screencast prior to the event, so I ‘walked and talked‘ the attendees through the trick with a promise to screencast it and post it to YouTube…..

…. as promised!

My next step will be to upload my slides to Slideshare, but more importantly (and time consuming) I’ll be adding some audio to the slideshare to create a slidecast.

Putting Sam’s last response to one side for the benefit of this blog post, I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to put down my thought as to the ‘allowing UGC to be posted directly into an organisation‘ Vs ‘being approved by L&D‘ debate

So let me start off by listing what I believe the benefits are of allowing UGC to be posted directly into an organisation:

It’s fast, as it doesn’t rely upon any approval process

It provides the contributor with a sense of ‘being trusted’ as their content has gone ‘live’ immediately.

The target audience is far more likely to be able differentiate good content from crap than L&D are and if the correct tools are in place will be able to allow good content to rise to the surface as Mark Berthelemy alludes to in his tweet below.

@samt_el Or else build in filtering mechanisms like ratings and comments so the best can rise to the top?

As always there are 2 sides to every coin, so here are the potential downsides to allowing the content to be pushed directly into an organisation without any approval process.

As the process is fast, this could lead to incorrect and even unsafe information being picked up and used by colleagues before the community as a whole has had the opportunity to vote/comment/feed back on the content.

An employee may, in good faith, contribute some content which is found to be lacking in some way by the community. Low ratings and less-than-positive comments may lead to embarrassment and reduce the likelihood of them contributing in the future.

So now let’s take a look at the ‘L&D filter‘ side of things. In my opinion the advantages are:

It provides a comfort blanket for anybody in the organisation who is reluctant to the concept of UGC.

It provides a ‘form‘ of QA prior to the content going ‘live’.

I believe the disadvantages of putting a ‘filter’ in place are:

Any form of QA being provided via L&D is only likely to be applicable and accurate to L&D focussed content. After all, are we seriously suggesting that L&D could/should be checking content that relates to Ops or Finance or PR?

It insinuates a culture of mis-trust as we want to vet your contribution before we release it to the masses.

Genuine ‘untapped gold’ could be be lost due to it not necessarily conforming to the ‘norm’. Allow me to explain…

My previous employer had incredibly stringent policies and protocols in place surrounding it’s operational processes due to nature of it’s business. A very low-tech knowledge sharing platform (that had no filter in place) revealed that advice was being offered that wasn’t technically correct and didn’t conform to the approved process. This was flagged up by a member of that target community. A short investigation revealed that the contrary advice/method that was being offered was not just as safe as the official method but was more efficient, this led to it being formally adopted.

I often wonder that if that advice had been subject to a verification process whether it would have just been stopped dead in it’s track and would never have seen the light of day?

So there are my thoughts on the ‘allowing UGC to be posted directly into an organisation‘ Vs ‘being approved by L&D‘ debate.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/03/cut-the-crap/feed/1#LMS Confusion…http://tayloringit.com/2012/03/lms-confusion/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/03/lms-confusion/#commentsSun, 18 Mar 2012 17:00:04 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2113… is probably the best way of describing how I felt after reading some preliminary findings from the ‘LMSwishlist‘ that Redtray have been conducting.

If I’m honest I’m not a big fan of all the L&D online surveys that seem to be doing the rounds nowadays for 2 reasons.

There seems to be about 1 survey a month (at the very least)! Can’t somebody just say “you know what, I’ll cover ‘em all Guys”

Reading that 87% of senior executives would consider utilising xyz technology if it added value to the bottom line, doesn’t really float my boat or add much value to what I do.

So it was with some trepidation and apathy that I glanced over the ‘Ten LMS Features Most L&D Experts Don’t Really Care About‘ and boy-oh-boy am I glad I did!!!

I’ll let the Storify below outline my confusion and if I’m honest incredulity (not a bad word for a Sunday afternoon). Suffice to say that I’m dying to find out what the 10 features Experts DID care about are!!!

Were you one of the ‘experts’ that participated in this survey? What were your reasons for submitting some of the responses you did? I don’t mean to be nosey, but come on…. you ‘don’t care’ about compliance? About RSS feeds? About language packs? About managing your budget?

You’ve GOT to tell me what I’m missing here….

[<a href=”

This storify was created to capture an online dialogue I participated in surrounding a survey by Redtray in particular the ‘Ten LMS Features Most L&D Experts Don’t Really Care About’

This storify was created to capture an online dialogue I participated in surrounding a survey by Redtray in particular the ‘Ten LMS Features Most L&D Experts Don’t Really Care About’

http://storify.com/craigtaylor74/lms-confusion” target=”_blank”>View the story “LMS Confusion??” on Storify</a>]

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/03/lms-confusion/feed/12On the bus….http://tayloringit.com/2012/03/on-the-bus/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/03/on-the-bus/#commentsWed, 14 Mar 2012 16:30:09 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2102… off the bus, is probably how I would describe the last few months, in relation to a few speaking gigs I’d had lined up.

Between August and December of last year I was fortunate enough have been asked to speak at a number of events in 2012 on the subjects of:

Getting started with mobile learning

Getting the most from the Learning Technologies you already have

Needless to say, I was very excited at the prospect of this and started to do some tentative prep work.

However the early part of 2012 brought some disappointing news. One of the events ‘people’ contacted me to let me know that given my “change in circumstances“, I would no longer be able to facilitate my session????? When I dug (and believe me, I had to dig) for what exactly my “change in circumstances” was I discovered it was because I was now a ‘vendor’!

Despite my assurances that the content of the session in absolutely no way was designed to sell a product/service etc (in fact it was all about using the tech you already had) it was to no avail, I was out on my ear!

Not to worry, I still had my second session to look forward to……

….. that was until about a week later I got an email to say that ‘due to unforeseen circumstances‘ I would be unable to speak at that event too – I don’t think I need to tell you what the unforeseen circumstances were.

Again, had I been trying to flog a product or a service, then I could’ve understood, but it was a completely tool/platform/vendor agnostic session, that would’ve helped people maximise their learners ‘own’ mobile devices.

But the purpose of this blog post isn’t to whinge about those instances, but to let you know that I have been asked to speak at a forthcoming UCISA event on the subject of ‘Using YouTube For Training‘ with the full knowledge of the organiser that I am “dum, dum, dummmmmm” a vendor!!!!

I’m really excited about the prospect of this for a couple of reasons

It’s for an audience that I haven’t specifically worked with before

Given the nature of the subject I’ve been given, it will really allow me to play around with the ‘growing in popularity’ idea of the ‘flipped classroom’ by delivering the raw content via YouTube itself.

I’ve been thinking about how I can maximise my use of G+ to add further value and I’ve come up with a plan.

From now on, whenever I publish a blog post that is likely to encourage some comments I’m going to suggest a Google Hangout a couple of days later to discuss it in more detail.

The Hangout will be 15 mins max and will take place over a lunchtime – sandwiches and nibbles are of course welcome!

My plan is to record the Hangout, post it to YouTube and then bring it back down to my blog to promote further discussion.

In fact, why am I waiting for my next blog post? If you’ve read my recent “As Bananarama said” series and have a comment to make then why not log into G+ at 1230hrs on Tuesday 07th Feb 2012, track me down and let’s ‘hang out’?

I’ve been thinking about how I can maximise my use of G+ to add further value and I’ve come up with a plan.

From now on, whenever I publish a blog post that is likely to encourage some comments I’m going to suggest a Google Hangout a couple of days later to discuss it in more detail.

The Hangout will be 15 mins max and will take place over a lunchtime – sandwiches and nibbles are of course welcome!

My plan is to record the Hangout, post it to YouTube and then bring it back down to my blog to promote further discussion.

In fact, why am I waiting for my next blog post? If you’ve read my recent ‘Get your foot in the door’ series and have a comment to make, a question or perhaps want to suggest a ‘get your foot in the door’ app to others then why not log into G+ at 1230hrs on Monday 30th Jan 2012, track me down and join me whilst I ‘hang out’?

See you there?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/im-hanging-out/feed/0Get your foot in the door – over to you…http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-over-to-you/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-over-to-you/#commentsFri, 27 Jan 2012 19:37:28 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2039So folks, for the past few weeks I’ve been blogging about the value of taking a low cost, low risk approach towards implementing learning / performance support via mobile devices, by scouring the apps stores for any currently existing native apps that could add value to your business.

Essentially ‘getting your foot in the door’ with regards to the use of mobile technologies.

I’ve received a small amount of feedback from some readers, (most recently from Mark Bradshaw in relation to the shift workers app) letting me know that they have, or will shortly be recommending some of the apps to their organisation.

Hopefully many more of you will come back to this series as and when you/your organisation starts to think along these lines.

As a parting post within this series for the time being, I’d like to introduce you to this tool

Poor intrinsic motivation to listen to the poor comms (from the learner)

We put too many infrastructure blockers in place!

Possible solutions to that, may be?

Leave blockers in place and put support in place

use simpler systems

Push people towards intrinsic motivation

Don’t we want learners to pull content down because they want to?

We may be good at designing the intervention, but we aren’t so good at communicating around the intervention. We should take a leaf out of our Comms department book, maybe even merge the departments, after all aren’t we trying to achieve the same goal?

Management should set:

expectations

WIIFM

permission

And set the vision that learners are expected to identify and source their learning opportunities

Gareth Williams Cambian Group and Information Transfer

Branded their training using the word ‘achieve‘

Poster campaigns

Merchandise

Brochure for all sites

Promos movie

Roadshow presentations

Article in company newsletters

Regular board reports

Here are the results so far

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/engaging-the-unwilling-learner-live-blog-from-lt12uk/feed/2Guilthttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/guilt/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/guilt/#commentsTue, 24 Jan 2012 18:44:38 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2023So I’ve spent a week concentrating on G+ now and I’ve made a few observations.

It’s much quieter in there than it is in Twitter. I’m not saying that’s a good or bad thing, it’s just quieter. I know that I can dip into G+ whenever I want and see some meaningful, useful (to me) threads of conversation without feeling like I’m going to be swept away by the Twitter Tidal Wave.

Of course, that also has its downside including the fact that the vast majority of my network aren’t using G+, so I’m not able to keep track as to what they are up to and what they are talking about – – but hang on – one of my reasons for moving away from Twitter was that I didn’t feel it was adding value! So why this feeling of abandoning my network, when what I’ve actually insinuated is that ‘they’ weren’t adding value!

But perhaps that feeling is retrospective?

I’ve noticed that since I blogged about reducing my Twitter activity a number of long-time Twitter followers have unfollowed me (I’ve never tracked this before, but thought it might be interesting to do so given this change in the way I’m using Twitter). Now this in itself I don’t find surprising, as why would they follow somebody who has said they aren’t going to use Twitter as much? But I haven’t said that I’m not going to stop blogging, or sharing resources etc, just that I’m going to concentrate on another platform for now.

A part of me assumed that those people would track me down on G+ and follow me in there, but that hasn’t happened. Which has got me wondering why?

Is it the fact that what I’ve been blogging about or the conversations I’ve been having, people have found irrelevant to them or is it the fact that they don’t want or need to be involved in another social media platform? I’d like to think it’s the latter as that excludes me from any perceived ‘fault’, but to be honest I’m suspecting that it’s the former.

Why?

Well for one very good reason really and that’s the reason I guess that I found my Twitter network as a whole to be adding little value – ‘guilt’!

There have been some people in my network that stopped adding the value that ‘I’ needed a long time ago, but I kept them in my network – why? – once again, guilt.

I felt I’d got to know those people on a personal level, either via Twitter, face to face, other channels or in a lot of cases a whole raft of ways. Even though they weren’t adding value to my reasons for using Twitter, I kept them in my network out of a feeling of guilt and awkwardness if I unfollowed them.

Is it wrong of me to think like this?

Can an online network grow into something other than what you originally engaged with it?

How do you then deal with that new ‘relationship’ once it’s non-intended use supersedes its original use?

I’ve spent the last couple of years attending/speaking at the Learning Technologies conference but if I’m honest, I haven’t really taken the time to dig into the exhibition as much as I should have done.

This year is different.

This year I will actually be participating in the exhibition myself, so armed with that physical immersion and the fact that I don’t have access to the conference upstairs, I will be spending some quality time looking around the various exhibitors in the hope of spotting something ‘innovative’.

So how do I define ‘innovative’?

Well to be honest I haven’t got a definition, but I have got a gut feeling. A few weeks ago, I was engaged in an exchange of tweets within my network of tweets around what innovation was and it became quite clear that people had very or subtly different definitions – and why wouldn’t they?

The sending of automated text messaging to learners ahead of an event may in some people’s eyes seem innovative, however to others it’s ‘old school’.

Many of us may see Augmented Reality as innovative, but military aircrew, in particular pilots, will tell you that Head Up Displays (HUDs) have been augmenting their reality for many, many years.

I’m definitely more open this year to seeing something out of the ordinary and a few vendors have already made some interesting statements about what they will be unveiling; but I’ll wait until I’ve seen it for myself before giving my post-event thoughts within this blog.

What I’m pretty sure of is that another rapid authoring tool, LMS or ingeniously ‘tarted up’ next button won’t be getting a mention.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/desperately-seeking/feed/0Get your foot in the door – Leadershiphttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-leadership/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-leadership/#commentsMon, 23 Jan 2012 17:00:29 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=2005Let’s be honest, Leadership programmes are a ‘must have‘ component of any successful organisation – (or so the many vendors who sell them will have you think)

So if your organisation is conducting such a programme (or even if it isn’t, but is keen to develop it’s leaders) then you’ve got a fantastic opportunity to get your foot in the door with the very people who are likely to have/will have a key role to play in any future decision making process around the use of mobile technologies.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your colleagues to them?

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

As with most reflective exercises, the first weekend has presented me with nothing that I didn’t already know, but it has brought them to the forefront of my mind.

Firstly, I feel that I have used Twitter for 3 purposes to date:

The posting of links to my own online content

The discussion of professional areas of interest

Mindless, banal waffle (which rather interestingly was one of the contributing factors to me ‘going off’ Twitter – was I a part of the problem???)

Whereas in comparison G+ had only ever (with a handful of exceptions) been used as a place to tout links to my blog.

I hadn’t really looked at other peoples content

I hadn’t gone out of my way to seek out and follow new people

I hadn’t engaged in any conversations.

This realisation has confirmed that my decision to engage with G+ on a deeper level has been the right one, in fact my plan (at the moment) is to completely transform my usage of the 2, so I’ll still be posting blog links etc to Twitter but expect to see less conversation and waffle (I can hear the sighs of relief from some of you now) instead if you want to engage in that, then why not head over to G+ and say Hi….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/twitter-to-g/feed/0A change is as good as a resthttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/a-change-is-as-good-as-a-rest/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/a-change-is-as-good-as-a-rest/#commentsSun, 22 Jan 2012 09:33:48 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1993For some time now, I have been reflecting upon my use of Twitter.

Over recent months I have found my Twitter stream to contain little, if anything of true value to me personally. It’s either been stuff that I ‘get‘, stuff that I’m not interested in or RTs of other peoples stuff (again, that I already ‘get’ or that I’m not interested in). I’ve also noticed that the way I have been accessing Twitter has most definetly fallen into the ‘from a mobile device’ category – even when I’m sat in front of a PC! (I guess that as I am ‘mobile’ myself a lot nowadays, this has helped to form the habit)

Given:

the fact that I access Twitter a LOT from my mobile devices

my perception that I haven’t been getting a lot from it recently

that I’ve had a G+ account from Day 1, but have never really ‘dug into it’

I decided to uninstall Twitter from my mobile devices and use that same habit and time to concentrate on Google +.

Uninstalling Twitter from my mobile devices. Focusing on G+ from now on. Tatty-bye

What I hadn’t counted on was the response from some members of my network in response to this. Some people genuinely asked “why“, others jokingly said I’d ‘be back‘, one accused me of Social Media snobbery and others sent quite ……. ‘colourful‘ DMs; which depending on what mood I’m in over the coming weeks I might just embed in a follow-up blog post….. (that’ll teach ya!)

Now it’s not that some people responded in the way they did that I am puzzled by (only last week I sent a tweet that some people considered a personal attack, so I’m not overly guarded myself as to how I use Twitter) it’s more the issue that my decision to uninstall Twitter from my mobile devices (I never said that I was stepping away from Twitter, or closing my account, just that I was uninstalling it from my mobile devices to focus on G+) should have generated such a feeling on animosity from certain tweeps.

Anyway for those of you who do feel that my decision to concentrate on G+ has in some way had a deep impact upon your lives I just want to be absolutely clear that

I am still using Twitter but for the time being only from my PC

I still have several auto-posts set up from various sources to Twitter

I may well return to tweeting from my mobile devices once I have had time to concentrate on G+

but it will be a decision that I will make, in my own time and for my own reasons.

Let’s be honest, I think it’s fair to say that one of the biggest barriers to a whole sale adoption of mobile technologies is senior management. Which got me thinking about what sort of app you could recommend to them, to get your foot in their door.

And then it dawned me; one of the things that senior managers do a LOT of (whether they actually need to or not) is travel (I think it’s a kudos thing for many of them)

So I’ve taken a little wander around some of the app stores and found some travel related apps that I imagine will make their lives a lot easier when they are on their travels and of course if their lives are made easier by having a native app at their disposal, there’s a much better chance of them seeing the benefit of mobile technologies when you attempt to ‘get your foot in the door’ ……

* (I have actually downloaded and used this app myself, check out the reviews for my thoughts)

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-planes-trains-automobiles/feed/2Get your foot in the door – First Aidhttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-first-aid/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-first-aid/#commentsMon, 16 Jan 2012 07:45:13 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1949I think I’m fairly safe in saying that regardless of what organisation you are in, your employees are just as much at risk of having an accident or an ailment as the next person.

So of course the ability for them to be able to respond accordingly is in everybody’s interest. I’m sure there’s some form of ‘law’ that states that employers should have suitably trained people and that’s all well and good, but how likely is it that that person will be ‘on the scene’ as it happens? When did that person last undertake that treatment for ‘real’ or under assessment?I’m certainly not saying that those roles aren’t important, but why not augment that role by providing First Aid training / performance support to ‘all’ via their mobile devices?

If your employees are as prone to slips, trip, falls, cuts, grazes, (and worse) as the rest of us mere mortals then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your colleagues to them?

(I have actually downloaded and used this app myself, check out the app store reviews for my thoughts)

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-first-aid/feed/9Get your foot in the door – Key Skillshttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-key-skills/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-key-skills/#commentsTue, 10 Jan 2012 20:35:23 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1930In the run up to Christmas last year I met with a potential client and suggested (as I am now doing in this blog) that they take a look at what is going on in their business and then trawl the app stores looking for any free/low costs apps that could help to achieve their business aims.

The organisation in question was doing a great deal of commendable work to upskill elements of their workforce in the key skills of literacy and numeracy by offering them GCSE tuition and examination(s).

If your organisation also offers development opportunities in these key skills areas then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct any of your learners who are undertaking any form of key skills to them.

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

Having worked in a couple of organisations which operated a shift roster I know how important it is for shift workers to be able to accurately record and verify the shift pattern that they are operating on.

If this is applicable to your organisation then you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to ‘get your foot in the door‘ and prove the worth of performance support via mobile devices.

Why not take a look at these apps and consider whether you might want to direct your shift workers towards them.

Inevitably there will be some people who do not have a mobile device and will bemoan the fact that you are offering their colleagues who do have a mobile device something that they themselves are unable to benefit from, or they will complain over the fact that the apps cost money – don’t let this put you off.

Simply tell them to carry on using whatever tool or process they have always used – simples!!!

And you know what? Even if people don’t opt for these apps, you may have just sewn the seeds for them to look for an alternative….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/get-your-foot-in-the-door-shift-workers/feed/1Getting your foot in the doorhttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/getting-your-foot-in-the-door/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/getting-your-foot-in-the-door/#commentsSun, 08 Jan 2012 17:07:20 +0000http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/getting-your-foot-in-the-door/Whenever I meet people who are still in the tentative stages of considering utilising mobile technologies I always suggest that rather than initially invest in a bespoke mobile app or a mobile authoring tool, that they instead consider promoting existing apps to their workforce from within the various app stores.

I believe that this has several benefits

a ) almost zero cost to the organisation (the only cost I can see is the time to search for, identify and promote the apps to the workforce)

b) almost zero risk. The developer has taken the risk with the development of the app itself and as long as you have identified and then tested the suitability of any app, then the risks are reduced even further. The reason I said ‘almost‘ no risk, is that there is always the potential for the app to develop bugs or for the content to go out of date, which obviously has the potential to sour the experience for the learner and in turn for your plans to develop things further.

In order to help you with identifying suitable apps, I’m planning to start a ‘foot in the door’ section of this blog which will highlight some of the apps that I have identified as having the potential to add value to many workplace learner’s workflows and allow you to get your ‘foot in the door‘ with little or no risk/cost.

Some of them will be apps that my employer has produced; some will not.

Some will be free, others will have a cost attached.

Some of them I will have demonstrable experience of using personally and/or of others using, others will rest upon a gut feeling.

I will always try and add context behind my reason for choosing that app with some of them being apps that I have actually recommended to ‘real’ clients – as I’m sure you’ll appreciate I’ll be unable to reveal who the client is, but I will indicate that is was a ‘genuine’ recommendation.

“Yes” in so far as it is about introducing the concept of mobility into your L&D approach…

…. and “No” in so far as it’s not about a lengthy, decision riddled, strategic approach, it’s about simple, pragmatic approaches that you can adopt (and indeed may already be doing) that can help you get your foot in the door, prior to moving onto other things.

Most of the slides used in the screencast below were inspired by the JISC Mobile infokit by Doug Belshaw – so thanks to Doug and JISC for providing the inspiration for this.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/oh-no-not-another-getting-started-with-mobile-blog-post/feed/5Recording your Skype callshttp://tayloringit.com/2012/01/recording-your-skype-calls/
http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/recording-your-skype-calls/#commentsMon, 02 Jan 2012 22:58:24 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1884A couple of days ago I received a tweet from Di Dawson asking if I had screenshots or video files from any virtual classroom sessions that I had previously facilitated for a programme that she was putting together.

My unfortunate answer was “no” as I have admittedly been shortsighted in my use of them in the past and had never anticipated needing to ‘capture’ the session itself as a resource in its own right. (of course I captured sessions using the Blackboard Collaborate tool that I had access to whilst working at URENCO, but I no longer have access to those). Not wanting to let Di down, I did a bit of thinking and thought about how I could kill 2 birds with one stone.

How could I help Di out and also do something that I often get asked about, which is how do I go about recording my podcast audio.

So I came up with the idea of producing a screencast outlining the tools and process that I use to record my podcast audio and then actually call Di up ‘live’ within the screencast and show the recording in progress.

Here’s what we came up with….

If you want a word of advice, I’d only watch the first 5 mins 15 secs of this screencast and the last 90 seconds. They are the parts of the screencast that are visual, the rest of it is purely audio and it’s quite a long time to just stare at a boring Skype screen just to hear the conversation between myself and Di, but don’t fret, my next podcast will be that very conversation.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2012/01/recording-your-skype-calls/feed/4Podcast #22: I have no idea where this podcast is heading…http://tayloringit.com/2011/12/podcast-22-i-have-no-idea-where-this-podcast-is-heading/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/12/podcast-22-i-have-no-idea-where-this-podcast-is-heading/#commentsFri, 16 Dec 2011 16:33:15 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1874Craig is joined by Zak Mensah for an impromptu chat about meeting people on Twitter, the similarities and differences between the education sector and corporates, the pros and cons of prefixing ‘learning’ with a range of letters, weelearning, ‘mobile’ and just about anything else that comes to mind!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/12/podcast-22-i-have-no-idea-where-this-podcast-is-heading/feed/4My top 10 Learning Tools for 2011http://tayloringit.com/2011/11/my-top-10-learning-tools-for-2011/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/11/my-top-10-learning-tools-for-2011/#commentsSun, 06 Nov 2011 20:39:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1856It’s that time of the year again folks when Jane Hart is reminding us all to submit our ‘Top 10 Learning Tools 2011/of the year’.

This is something that I contributed to for the first time last year and it was interesting to see where my preferred tools came in the ‘Top 100′ ranking structure that Jane works out from all of our submissions, it is also a great place to catch wind of any new tools that are out there.

I am once again contributing to this years list, however I have decided to take a different tack. Whereas my list last year probably (I say probably because I can’t specifically remember) contained things like:

Twitter

YouTube

Google Reader

Slideshare

etc

I have decided to approach things from a different angle this year and have decided not to concentrate on the actual platform, but to think more carefully about how I get access to that platform. After all, it’s no good being a member of some of these wonderful online platforms if you can’t get to them. There are also a few in there just to remind us all that sometimes the answer doesn’t need to be a ‘click‘ away at all! I think it’s also worth mentioning that I have only very recently started working in a new organisation, Epic. What better time to consider what tools have been effective for my personal learning, within a real-time learning moment.

So here’s my Top 10 list of learning tools, in no particular order.

1. My phone (this allows me to phone people up and ask them a question, at which point I find Tool No 6 to be particularly useful)

2. My iPad (this allows me to review online information and communications in order to bring me up to speed on a given subject, of course without Tool No 4 I am somewhat limited in what I can do)

3. My laptop (not only can I do everything on this that I can do on Tool No 2, but I can also far more easily create content, which of course allows me to reflect upon what I am creating thus adding to my own personal learning experience)

4. Internet signal – WiFi/3G/4G/Ethernet (come on admit it, how many of you who submitted an entry into Janes Top 100 tools, overlooked the fact that *most* if not all of the tools you suggested rely upon being able to gain and maintain access to the t’internet?)

5. Falling over – not literally of course, I mean making mistakes. What more powerful tool can there be for learning than those amazing synapses in our brains firing adrenaline, emotions such as guilt, worry, embarrassment, shock etc after we have realised we have made a mistake. Sometimes bruised egos, flushed cheeks and yes – scraped knees serve us very well indeed.

6. My ears – let’s be honest, they’re in ‘receive mode’ far more than our Internet signal. Next time you’re amongst your team colleagues just allow yourself to listen to what’s being said….

7. The Epic intranet – a purpose-built repository of the specific ‘must/should/and could knows’ of my organisation. This has been of immense use to me over the last couple of weeks and no doubt will continue to be so in the future.

8. The guy who sits opposite me – His name is Andy Costello and he has been a godsend to me during my first few weeks working at Epic. Not only providing support when I have asked for it, but also providing it when he anticipates I am approaching a ‘just in time’ moment. Truly contextualised, semantic performance support.

9. Books/magazine etc (not fussy about the format)

10. My Son and Daughter – watching them grow up, evolve, learn, make mistakes etc provides me with some wonderful ‘lightbulb’ moments. Seeing how they navigate the challenges and problems that you and I take for granted, like carrying a plate without spilling its contents reminds me that all the learning challenges that you and I face are surmountable, I mean look at everything else that we have achieved in our lives!

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http://tayloringit.com/2011/11/my-top-10-learning-tools-for-2011/feed/10Podcast #21: Lisa’s back!!!http://tayloringit.com/2011/11/podcast-21-lisas-back/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/11/podcast-21-lisas-back/#commentsFri, 04 Nov 2011 15:58:37 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1839Craig chats with Lisa Johnson on the subject of her teams’ recent *award winning* work with the use of internal wikis and ‘just-in-time’ performance support videos.

Once we had sourced the software my Head of Department insisted that we launch the system with a fanfare etc and advertise it’s existence. Now I must admit that at this stage I was a little reluctant to follow this course of action because self-paced elearning was nothing new to my Organisation, it was just that we had decided to bring the development in-house; I even quoted the old “YouTube was never launched line“, but he was having none of it….. so it was off the the PR & Comms department (which is ironically where I ended up working) to ask for some advice.

Rather than waffle on about the advice that they provided, I thought it would be far more interesting to show you….

They advised that I should ‘brand’ the elearning. Not from a screen layout, fonts etc perspective but from a ‘logo type’ angle; this is what we came up with

It plays upon the ubiquitous ‘e’ that many people associate with online activities as well as the ‘swirls’ which were a part of that organisations branding.

We then discussed how we could use the info-screens that are situated around site to enhance our campaign and settled upon what my colleague called a ‘sting campaign‘. If you are unsure as to what this is, then think about the run-up to Big Brother every year. Channel 4 ran a ‘sting’ campaign consisting of 1-2 second pieces of footage showing the Big Brother eye, usually with a few beats of the Big Brother music.

I decided that I also wanted to take this ‘teaser’ approach too, but more importantly wanted to get people talking about the campaign whilst still maintaining an air of mystery….. very much like the British Gas “tell Sid…..” campaign from yesteryear.

This is what we came up with, as you can see we have used the elearning logo to maintain the ‘branding’ of the campaign…

and I don’t actually mention what the hell it is that is coming. This was something of a gamble, however it really got people talking about the ads and what it was and when it was coming.

Our campaign was working.

Towards the end of the campaign we started to reveal a little more about what it was via a poster & flyer campaign.

The posters were placed in all the usual places

stairwells

notice boards

Kitchen areas

Back of toilet doors

…………. Above the urinals

I was shameless!

I also took a leaf out of McDonalds book and placed the posters on the trays in our on-site, self-serve restaurant to…. well… ram it down people’s throats even more (pun intended)

Once we had launched the system we then followed it up with an interview to fill in the gaps that the marketing campaign had been unable to do (this was one of our first recorded interviews and we were still learning the ropes (as you’ll be able to see), but it got the message across)

So folks, that was how we launched the in-house elearning system in my previous organisation.

Would I have chosen to do it that way?

No.

Am I glad that I did it that way?

Yes.

Why?

Because it taught me a great deal about thinking about the bigger picture around a single initiative. Although this was a piece of software and subsequently multiple self-paced elearning modules I would still choose to take this ‘campaign’ approach to the implementation of almost anything.

Granted, the effort involved may vary, but certainly from the perspective of a learning resource I’ll always try to ensure that it is only ‘part’ of a much bigger picture.

So that’s what I did, but what about you?

Have you ever mounted a campaign as part of a learning initiative?

Did it work?

What did you do?

Have you tried this but found it to be a waste of time?

Why not let us all know via the comments box below……

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/10/think-campaign/feed/2Podcast #20: It’s time to chat about compliance. Again!http://tayloringit.com/2011/10/podcast-20-its-time-to-chat-about-compliance-again/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/10/podcast-20-its-time-to-chat-about-compliance-again/#commentsSun, 16 Oct 2011 17:07:59 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1817Craig chats with Laura Layton James on the subject of her recent blog post and discuss whether it is possible to create engaging compliance elearning.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/10/podcast-20-its-time-to-chat-about-compliance-again/feed/0I got it wrong….. Or did I?http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/i-got-it-wrong-or-did-i/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/i-got-it-wrong-or-did-i/#commentsFri, 23 Sep 2011 21:56:03 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1794I recent attended the eLearning Network event ’10 things every learning designer should know’ and whilst the event gave me a few ideas to mull over, what really had an impact on me was a chance conversation that I had during the mid-morning break, which if I’m being honest, shocked me a little and distracted me for the rest of the day.

Allow me to explain…

During the first session of the day Bryan Hopkins from UNHCR made a general reference to the fact that “people can’t possibly be learning effectively if they are tapping away on mobile devices“(paraphrased). This led to a few giggles on my table, as at that very moment I was tapping away on my iPad.

During the mid-morning break I made reference back to that incident and drew a parallel to a meeting I was in during the early Summer where everybody was taking notes, however I was the only one taking them on an iPad, whereas everybody else was taking them with pen and paper. The meeting organiser actually stopped after 10 mins and asked what I was doing; when I told (and showed) them what I was doing, they still admitted that the fact I was on a mobile device made them feel uncomfortable.

Now I had expected the people I was regaling this tale to over a cuppa to be sympathetic to my situation however I was wrong!

Instead 3 of the 4 people indicated that it would also put them off and make them question whether or not I was truly paying attention during the meeting and whether I was genuinely taking notes. We threw this around for a couple of minutes with me even pulling the old “who’s to say I’m paying attention/taking genuine notes, just because I’m using a pen and paper” but even this didn’t sway them.

I quickly popped smoke and withdrew back to the safety of the main area and discussed this back at my groups table, where, you may be surprised (or maybe not) to discover that the majority of those people also expressed doubt/concern/worry/frustration etc over people using mobile devices to take notes during learning events, meetings etc.

Had I been in any other environment than the one I was in yesterday I probably wouldn’t have been overly surprised….

… But this was an eLearning Network event!!!!

Surely eLN members would ‘get’ the advantages of using technology to aid productivity even if it wasn’t in an overtly ‘learning’ context, wouldn’t they?

And that’s what led me to this particular blog title, because it appears I was wrong.

Or was I?

Is it reasonable to expect us and our learners to use technology to aid our/their productivity in areas and in situations that have traditionally used pen and paper?

Should we maintain traditional practices for meetings but attempt to push forward with new practices when the output has an overt ‘learning’ tag attached to it?

Do you use technology to aid your personal productivity or not?

Are you encouraging/discouraging of others to do so?

Oh and for those of you who are wondering exactly what I was tapping away on my iPad for, I was producing this mindmap of the days sessions, which I am now sharing with others.

For those of you I was annoying, why not share your handwritten notes with us all?

Image sources: Click one each image to be taken to the individuals Flickr profile page.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/i-got-it-wrong-or-did-i/feed/81Gearing Up For Learning Livehttp://tayloringit.com/2011/09/1778/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/1778/#commentsSun, 11 Sep 2011 08:25:39 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1778A few months ago Don Taylor asked me to facilitate a session at the IITT’s Learning Live conference, a request that (as always) I jumped at for a number of reasons; there are the obvious ones:

An opportunity to meet up with colleuages who I have only ever interacted with online

To meet new people and further enhance my network

To attend (for free!) some fantastic looking sessions facilitated both by people I know, trust and respect as well as some people who I do not (yet) know

To showcase my skills amongst the wider industry

But there is an additional reason that may not be obvious and may not be everybody’s ‘raison detre’ for speaking at conferences and workshops and it is this

It challenges me to ‘do‘ and ‘be‘ something different. As regular readers will know the opportunities for me to show my passion and interest in this area are restricted within my organisation so any opportunity to do so to a like-minded group of people is not only seized upon, but I guess it also acts as a testing ground for all the things that I am unable to do within my normal working day.

Not only do I want the content of the session to resonate with the attendees who have (very often) paid good money to attend these conferences, but I also want the audience to leave with some additional ideas as to how to facilitate sessions and workshops in a different manner, a ‘meta’ session within a session if you like. I always find that a reliable way of doing this is to add a great deal of interactivity within the session and in particular within the navigation of the session. Now this can be a little tricky to do as you are essentially stepping away from the linear type of presentation that we all know, that is easier to put together and to a large degree is ‘safe’. I have in the past even managed to tell a story using a non linear approach and allowing the audience to choose wether they wanted the beginning, middle or end bit and in what order – and it worked!!!

For Learning Live I have once again chosen to take a non linear to the session but this time I have decided (or as I have never done this before it may be accurate to say ‘gambled’) to take the navigation off the screen as I have previously done and bring it physically into the classroom, but to then take any decision that the audience makes and put it back onto the screen……

…… sound complicated?

Well actually it isn’t and if you’re attending my session at Leaning Live then you’ll see (fingers crossed) how it all works – who knows it may give you some ideas in the future???

As a little clue as to how I’m going to work the navigation aspect here is a short video that I have made to ‘set up’ my forthcoming session

See you in Brum?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/1778/feed/0A little help from my friendshttp://tayloringit.com/2011/09/a-little-help-from-my-friends/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/a-little-help-from-my-friends/#commentsFri, 09 Sep 2011 19:51:10 +0000http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/a-little-help-from-my-friends/A few months ago I wrote this blog post which centred around a learner could tell that they were at a ‘just in time training’ moment. I won’t reiterate the entire blog post here as you can always go back and read it here.

After writing that blog post I started to put together a mindmap with ideas as to some ‘triggers’ that could initiate ‘just in time’ support. I put a tweet out asking if anybody fancied collaborating on the map and unsurprisingly a number of people volunteered to contribute (don’t you just love the way these tool, foster and promote this type of one-click collaboration).

Unfortunately I then forgot all about the mindmap until Clarke Quinn‘s recent blog post, so Dear Reader here is the mindmap that a few of us collaborated on over the balmy Summer of 2011 (you may need to zoom in/out or expand to full screen to view properly).

I’ve also made the map a ‘wikimap’ which means that anybody can make additions to it (hint, hint)

What do you think?

Have we covered everything?

What have we missed out?

We’d appreciate your thoughts….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/a-little-help-from-my-friends/feed/0Podcast #19: From NVQ to ITQ…http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/from-nvq-to-itq/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/from-nvq-to-itq/#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2011 19:37:10 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1756Craig chats with Di Dawson on the subject of gaining formal accreditation for learning programmes and in particular the offering of ITQs for Social Media, Mobile Learning and Accessible IT.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/09/from-nvq-to-itq/feed/1Podcast #18: Radio GaGahttp://tayloringit.com/2011/08/podcast-18-radio-gaga/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/08/podcast-18-radio-gaga/#commentsWed, 24 Aug 2011 17:53:19 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1747Craig chats with his gaffer Neil, on the subject of podcasting to an internal audience with a particular focus on their shiny new toy…..

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/08/podcast-18-radio-gaga/feed/8I say “tomato”, you say “redvinegrownvegetableation”http://tayloringit.com/2011/08/i-say-tomato-you-say-redvinegrownvegetableation/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/08/i-say-tomato-you-say-redvinegrownvegetableation/#commentsTue, 09 Aug 2011 18:01:45 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1726Let’s be honest as Learning Folk who have an interest in using technology to add value to our organisations and our learners, we have a tough job on a number of fronts. Not least of which is the challenge in positively influencing those people in our organisations who are responsible for giving the ‘nod’ or putting their hands in their pockets.

So why do we make it hard on ourselves by (at times it seems) making up words or at best picking an existing word to explain what we are doing i.e. curation and gamification???

Surely a couple of words or even a sentence to explain what we are doing is better than trying to cram our plans into a single word?

I have been working with a published author Fiona Talbot for a few weeks now and she has been telling me of some work she has been doing with Corgi/Gas Safe to rewrite their manuals by putting them into Plain English. Interestingly the rewritten version is slightly longer than original version.

Why?

Because sometimes in order to make things clearer to people we need to take the time (and word count) to explain things in Plain English as opposed to using jargon or overly complex words in a vain effort to sound ‘with it’ or dare I say it…. ‘buzz wordy’!

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, however a recent blog post from Saffron Interactive prompted me to respond to. I suspect that there may be some problems with Saffrons commenting system as I left the comment over 29 hours ago and it still hasn’t been moderated so I though it best that I reproduce the original post (and my comment here)

Gamification in eLearning

Friday, July 29th, 2011

Written by Alex Webb

This is a report back from my first day working at Saffron Interactive. Apologies for the short delay, but you’ll understand that I have been very busy for the last month! In an exciting start to my Saffron career I spent my first day attending the Learning and Skills Group (LSG) conference at Olympia a great way to be introduced to the world of e-learning.

I do not come from an e-learning background but I have always had a keen interest in technology and games and one particular talk really captured my imagination. I’m sure most people are familiar in some form or another with the world of video games whether through PCs or a range of consoles covering all ages and tastes. Gaming however is now beginning to have an effect outside of our leisure time and is becoming prevalent in everyday life, for example the way we shop, network and learn.

For those unfamiliar with Gamification a new and growing concept in the world of e-learning the idea is based on the use of gaming mechanics to increase user engagement whilst delivering key learning objectives. For those still somewhat mystified by the term I have included a definition below;

Gamification works by making technology more engaging and by encouraging desired behaviours, taking advantage of humans psychological predisposition to engage in gaming.

At the LSG conference, this was explored in depth with a talk from Alicia Sanchez who has been appointed Games Czar at the US Defense Acquisition University (DAU).

Alicia’s talk presented some interesting examples, in this case based on military procurement, an area that apparently requires regular and incredibly stringent compliance training. By using the setting of a game, a far more positive response was generated from the workforce in digesting the necessary content for their roles. One such example was a simulation where the user would carry out compliance checks on weapons on the premise of preventing an alien invasion.

What’s more as gaming has begun to take on a social aspect, this can be incorporated into e-learning for even higher levels of engagement. For example, in the same way that Xbox players use gamer scores to celebrate achievements and relate to their peers, the DAU allows players to build online profiles giving added value and a social element to their learning achievements. This is also great from a learning provider’s perspective as it provides a method for demonstrating the impact that its courses have on user groups.

If you take this social aspect in combination with a Gamification style of e-learning further, it is also clear how learners working together could gain huge additional benefits in terms of organisation and teamwork given the right environment. In a previous organisation I worked at, the Sales Director actually mused:

If teenagers can work together in World of Warcraft to be organised and achieve common objectives I do not see why our sales force cannot do the same!

It will be interesting to see if many of the positive side effects of massively multiplayer gaming would become increasingly prevalent as an additional benefit for this type of delivery. Although I would add a caveat here that had the sales force assembled itself into a 30 man raid group and stormed customers offices (a la World of Warcraft) it may not have gone down well. I do hope however you can see the point I am making In terms of cooperation between departments and employees.

Of course there are limitations to the Gamification of learning. Budgets are always under increased scrutiny and is there as one of my colleagues put it an assumption that if its fun it can’t be good for you? Even taking these issues into account it will be interesting to see if this is a view that shifts if Gamification style courses begin to build up a backlog of case studies with quantifiable results. The other long term factor here could be as younger generations of the workforce come into management positions with a greater familiarity with the culture of gaming there will be an increasing appetite at senior levels to champion this as a style of learning.

As a final note I would like mention one of my favourite solutions of this type currently on the market: a revision of House of the Dead which is not only guaranteed to improve users typing skills but also looks like great fun!

I look forward to giving some further updates on Gamification from the Saffron perspective in the coming months.

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This article was written onÃ‚Â Friday, July 29th, 2011Ã‚Â byÃ‚Â Alex Webb

Craig TaylorÃ‚Â Says:Ã‚Â Your comment is awaiting moderation.August 8th, 2011 at 11:28 amHi Alex,Thanks for the blog post and I hope that you’re settling in well at Saffron.I would like to hear your thoughts about the complex language that we (the L&D community) are wrapping around old, new and emerging terms the most obvious one being ‘gamification’. I see more and more ‘one hit’ words being created to describe something that a Plain English sentence is more than capable of describing. Let’ s not forget, those of us in this niche industry *may* understand the terms that we are coming out with (or we *might* take the time to research them) however the business leaders with whom we are working with/for have no idea what these terms mean, they have no time to research them and all we have succeeded in doing is wrapping yet another layer of complexity or jargon around a term within the ‘elearning’ world, which many people are *still* having trouble coming to terms with from a holistic perspective .i.e. a few years ago we coined a new phrase ‘e-learning’ that has become synonymous with self-paced, (sometimes interactive), page-turners and still isn’t widely recognised as including podcasts, videos, screencasts, forums, Wikis, blogs etc. Let’s not start jargonising (see what I did there) everything that we do, let’s stick to reliable Plain English.

As expected the usual suspects were mentioned numerous times, however simulations and games based activities were only mentioned by 1 person, so I thought I would have a chat with Chris Brannigan from Thinking Worlds about the possible reasons that for many people ‘simulations’ and ‘immersive environments’ don’t figure when it comes to suggesting elearning methods and how a new FREE authoring platform may be the ‘break in’ to the simulation world that many people are looking for.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/podcast-17-bill-gates-is-calling/feed/2Getting Beyond Bullet Points – Tools and Resourceshttp://tayloringit.com/2011/07/getting-beyond-bullet-points-tools-and-resources/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/getting-beyond-bullet-points-tools-and-resources/#commentsMon, 25 Jul 2011 07:15:20 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1693For those of you who have read this series of posts relating to my LSG11UK session you’ll know that I reference several tools, resources and pieces of research throughout.

Rather than just sitting on these resources I thought I’d share them with you via this blog post.

You can find the bookmarked resources in my Diigo account or alternatively if you fancy viewing them whilst you are out-and-about, here’s a QR code that will get you to the same location.

If you find anything of interest/use it would great if you could let me know in the comments box below or indeed if you know of any resources that I could add, then again please leave a link in the comments box below.

1. The earlier posts will provide you with the context behind this post.

2. You will notice in the the earlier posts I suggest that whilst a modern, bullet-point free, visually rich presentation is certainly very engaging and less cognitively challenging for any learners, this approach certainly falls down when you distribute the slides on their own after the event.

Essentially all the learner is left with is a collection of pretty slides, which without the context that your narrative provides may fall short of it’s intended purpose. I mentioned that an audio recording of your ‘live’ presentation can be coupled with your slides to provide that important narrative, possibly utilising Slideshare to synchronise the various elements.

The second of this series of posts coupled visuals with a ‘non-live’ audio recording. The benefit of this was that I could keep the duration fairly short, improve the quality of the recording and stick to the ‘script’ – Of course, that also meant that any questions that were asked during the live session are lost to the learner and that any interesting digressions are not included.

To illustrate this point the audio recording below was recorded live at my LSG session. The audio was taken from my lapel mic, into the audio mixing desk and then directly into my Zoom mp3 recorder.

Upon reflection, I’m not sure that I would ever use this type of audio as a learning resource. I feel that the lulls throughout the recording (when the attendees were undertaking group work) would be off-putting to a listener and only serve to make the recording longer, although of course those silences could be edited out.

I also feel that the duration of a ‘live’ recording would be naturally longer than a ‘clinical’ scripted recording, again I feel that the shorter the resource, the more likelihood of a learner accessing it.

But what do you think, would you rather listen to the live, uncut, raw recording?

Would you prefer the scripted, shorter version?

Or would you actually prefer to have both resources made available so that you can make your own choice?

Don’t forget, this is Part 5 in a series of posts surrounding my LSG11UK session.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/podcast-16-getting-beyond-bullet-points-live-podcast/feed/0How do we know it’s time for ‘Just In Time’ training?http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/how-do-we-know-its-time-for-just-in-time-training/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/how-do-we-know-its-time-for-just-in-time-training/#commentsTue, 19 Jul 2011 08:45:00 +0000http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/how-do-we-know-its-time-for-just-in-time-training/The YouTube vid below provides an example as to information being provided at point of ‘assumed need’ to a specified individual. For those of you who plan to dismiss the idea off the back of it being ‘just’ a sci-fi film, remember the virtual info screen that John Anderton (Tom Cruise)operates with his hands…….?

… Microsoft Kinect anybody

And now onto the context of this blog post. Sure, for many people it is fairly obvious when a moment of need has arisen because….. well…… they are in need!

They are at Point A, needing to get to Point C and don’t have the knowledge or skill to get them there. They realise this and seek some support to assist them – simples!

But what about when you don’t realise you are at Point A, or that you need to get to Point C, or perhaps more worryingly (and dangerously) ‘think’ you have the knowledge or skills to assist you, when in actual fact the knowledge or skills are wrong or outdated…… disaster looms….

So my question is:

What ‘triggers’ (other than the individual self-detecting a ‘just in time‘ need) are there/or can we create?

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Worker X has to pass from a potentially contaminated area to a clean area.

In order to do this they have to pass through a room with a monitoring device to detect any contamination.

On this particular occasion Worker X receives notification that their wife has gone into labour and rushes from the potentially contaminated area straight past the monitoring machine into the clean area…..!

Now imagine if there was a proximity detector in that room that detected any movement from the potentially contaminated area and immediately played a short 30 second movie on a screen above the exit door reminding Worker X (and anybody else) of the need for and process of monitoring.

Just in time performance support despite the worker forgetting/realising the need/assuming they had the skill.

Do you have any auto-triggers in your workplace to deliver performance support at the time of need?

If so, what do you use?

How do you use it?

Can you think of any auto triggers, beyond proximity detection?

Get those thinking caps on folks and let us all know via the comments box below, come on you lurkers….. you know you want to….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/how-do-we-know-its-time-for-just-in-time-training/feed/13Go Mobile MindMapping (try saying that 5 times, quickly)!http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/live-mindmapping-or-how-i-confirmed-that-i-cant-multitask/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/live-mindmapping-or-how-i-confirmed-that-i-cant-multitask/#commentsThu, 07 Jul 2011 09:28:22 +0000http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/live-mindmapping-or-how-i-confirmed-that-i-cant-multitask/Yesterday saw me attend an Epic hosted event with 125 other people which centered around Epic’s new Go Mobile publishing platform GoMo. There were a number of sessions taking place, but my main reason for attending was to look at the GoMo platform itself.

I normally take traditional ‘list style’ notes in something like Evernote or Notes, but on this occasion I thought I’d try out the MindMeister mindmapping app on my new iPad. I’ve have used MindMeister before from a laptop and on my Nexus S but those instances have always been in ‘ideal conditions’ i.e. sat in the quiet coach of a train or on the loo. They have never been in a ‘live environment’…. until yesterday….

Here is the mindmap I created, the nodes relating to iTune app have links within them, so why not take a look at the apps in question?

I have to admit that as I was new to the User Interface (UI) on the iPad I stumbled quite often and perhaps missed a little of the GoMo session itself, but overall I feel that I captured the salient points from the session. Clarke Quinn seems to be something of a master at this as he regularly produces very rich, informative mind maps during live sessions – I must remember to ask him how he does it!

I’ll try and spend more time practicing on the app before I attend my next session as this should hopefully lead to more fluent use in the session and ultimately result in more information being captured.

1. The earlier posts will provide you with the context behind this post.

2. The purpose of this specific post is to provide a brief audio summary of the actions that the attendees committed to, on leaving my session. By viewing the earlier posts in this series there is more likelihood that the attendees actions will make sense.

I have to admit that I wouldn’t usually take this approach for providing visibility of the attendees actions, much preferring to have the attendees create an AudioBoo or tweet their actions and then produce a Wordle from those responses, however the large number of attendees (60+) precluded the use of AudioBoo and the small number of tweeps would have had very little impact on a Wordle. What I was/am trying to show to presenters is how their presentation can still resonate days, if not weeks or even months after the live event by using methods such as this to keep the original message alive in the minds of those who attended and if you used a backchannel, perhaps even in the minds of those who did not physically attend.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/the-learners-voice/feed/3Podcast #14: Get your sleeves rolled up and get stuck in”http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/podcast-14-get-your-sleeves-rolled-up-and-get-stuck-in/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/podcast-14-get-your-sleeves-rolled-up-and-get-stuck-in/#commentsTue, 05 Jul 2011 21:49:22 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1610Lisa Johnson shares her teams success of delivering training to over 7000 people who are scattred throughout the length and breadth of the UK, with a team of only 5 people. Here’s how they’ve done it….

Lisa had asked me to consider the duration of my podcasts as she had found anything 30mins+ to be too long. This married up with additional feedback I had received so we decided to ‘rattle through’ with a 20 minute(ish) podcast, which I think works quite well – but what do you think?

Would you have rather Lisa and I discussed things in a greater details but with a longer duration?

Or does the short ‘n’ sharp podcast work for you?

Why not let us know, via the comments box below?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/podcast-14-get-your-sleeves-rolled-up-and-get-stuck-in/feed/3Bringing in the Backchannelhttp://tayloringit.com/2011/07/bringing-in-the-backchannel/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/07/bringing-in-the-backchannel/#commentsTue, 05 Jul 2011 18:23:08 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1598If you’ve not already read my previous blog posts ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points (visuals only)’ and ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points (with audio) then I’d strongly suggest having a read of them before you read any more of this post.

Why?

Well for 2 reasons really:

1. The earlier posts will provide you with the context behind this post.

2. The purpose of this specific post is to expand upon the subject of the backchannel that is only briefly mentioned in the earlier posts.

The reason that it is only briefly mentioned is due to the fact that I used Prezi to facilitate that particular element of my session. I guess I could have used PowerPoint just as effectively, but I wanted to demonstrate an alternative to traditional slide-ware software.

So grab your sickbags…. here’s the Prezi…….

Don’t forget, this is Part 3 in a series of posts surrounding my LSG11UK session.

It hurts me deeply to write this letter to you but I feel that it is time that we both went our separate ways. Sure, back in the early days we were both happy with one other and provided each other with what we needed, you were my ‘first’ and I will always remember the times that we had and I hope that you will also remember how happy we were back in the day.

The excitement of getting my hands on your Honeycomb was almost unbearable at times and I honestly thought that we would grow old together……

But it wasn’t all rosey was it?

Do you remember the time when you froze on me after I’d installed an app on you and you just wouldn’t talk to me and the only way I could get through to you was to let your battery run down so that you would reboot?

Do you remember how many times you promised me that you would change? That you would upgrade to Honeycomb 3.1? That you would give me full access to your SD card slot?

It’s these lies that have hurt me, the deceit that has forced me to write this letter.

I want you to know that I have met somebody else. I don’t know how things are going to work out with them as it’s very early days, they have promised me that they are due to upgrade later this year. Sure they are a little more controlling and it’s unlikely that they will want to experiment to the same degree that you and I did, but they are reliable and proven. If I had to sum this new relationship up in 3 words I would say “it just works”.

I don’t want you to feel down, angry or jealous if you see us out together. You’ll find somebody else – I know you will.

Remember, it’s not me, it’s you.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/dear-john/feed/3Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio.http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/getting-beyond-bullet-points-with-visual-and-audio/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/getting-beyond-bullet-points-with-visual-and-audio/#commentsThu, 23 Jun 2011 08:00:19 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1590If you’ve not already read my previous blog post ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points (visuals only)’ then I’d strongly suggest having a read of it before you read any more of this post.

Why?

Well for 2 reasons really:

1. The earlier post will provide you with the context behind this post.
2. The purpose of this specific post is to act as a comparison to the first post in this series, hence the benefit of viewing the first one!

As you will have seen in the previous post, using the approach of images and single words in a presentation is certainly visually engaging, however where it falls down (as highlighted during my live session by Laura Dickson) is when the presenter/facilitator is no longer present to provide the narrative – the engaging presentation is now nothing more than a collection of images and out of context words.

Here are the same slides that were contained in the earlier post, but this time with the narrative.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/getting-beyond-bullet-points-with-visual-and-audio/feed/2Podcast #13: A bit of banter with some brand-new bloggershttp://tayloringit.com/2011/06/podcast-13-a-bit-of-banter-with-some-brand-new-bloggers/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/podcast-13-a-bit-of-banter-with-some-brand-new-bloggers/#commentsWed, 22 Jun 2011 18:12:57 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1510Craig is joined by podcast panel regular Kate Graham along with some new voices which belong to Mandy Randall-Gavin and Niall Gavin. Today they are chatting about their recent journey into the…… “Blogosphere”!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/podcast-13-a-bit-of-banter-with-some-brand-new-bloggers/feed/0Getting Beyond Bullet Points (visuals only)http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/getting-beyond-bullet-points-visuals-only/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/getting-beyond-bullet-points-visuals-only/#commentsTue, 21 Jun 2011 19:32:55 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1573Once again, I consider myself extremely lucky and privileged to have been asked to speak at the Learning and Skills Group Annual Conference earlier this month at London Olympia.

I always try to facilitate a session that (I hope) has immediate take-aways for anybody that has attended. I believe that there are enough people speaking at a strategic and theoretical level about L&D and it’s associated disciplines without me throwing my hand in too, so I always try to ensure that I do what I can to offer what I call a ‘Monday morning quick win‘ i.e. something that can be implemented immediately (or at worst very quickly back in the workplace) following the attendees return to the ‘real world‘!

This time around I wanted to offer people the next step in improving their presentations. I get the feeling that there are more and more people who understand the need to move away from bullet-point riddled slides but are not sure exactly ‘what’ should replace them.

It was this uncertainty that I hoped to address during my session by showing some examples. It is these examples that will form the basis of my next few blog posts:

But let’s get things started, by having a look at the Slideshare presentation below. At first glance it ticks all the boxes in terms of reducing the bullet points and using images to illustrate my story, but there’s something missing. It would be great if you could take a few minutes to progress through the slides and leave your thoughts in the comments box below……

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/getting-beyond-bullet-points-visuals-only/feed/4It started with a Tweet…http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/it-started-with-a-tweet/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/it-started-with-a-tweet/#commentsThu, 16 Jun 2011 18:02:00 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1569… never thought it would come to this (if you’re not a Hot Chocolate fan then this blog title is wasted on you!)

That’s how the structure came about for my recent session at the Learning and Skills Group 2011 conference.

Having received a significant number of responses I then inputted them into Wordle and produced the following Wordle.

Do you agree with the general responses?

Do you disagree?

What 3 words would you use to respond to my tweet above?

Why not let me know via the comments box below…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/it-started-with-a-tweet/feed/0What’s in a name?http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/whats-in-a-name/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/whats-in-a-name/#commentsWed, 15 Jun 2011 19:44:50 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1564Or to be more accurate

“What’s in a job title“?

You might say (and I wouldn’t neccesarily disagree with you)

“not a lot, it’s what the individual ‘does‘ within that role that’s important”

You might come back to me and say (and again, I may not disagree with you)

“actually, a job title ‘does‘ matter, as it (rightly or wrongly) paints a picture in other people’s minds as to what you do and may often be the first thing that somebody discovers about you”

Which brings me nicely to the job title ‘Instructional Designer’.

Really?

Does anybody, anywhere be it in the vendor, client or DIY community really Design Instruction anymore?

Really?

Surely we are all about creating an environment, be it physical, digital or virtual (or what the hell, a combination) in which to facilitate learning, aren’t we?

My organisation moved away from calling its trainers ‘trainers’ a few years ago and now they are called Learning Facilitators – sure it’s just a title but look at the difference between the two…..

…. they send out very different messages don’t they?

So why in the eLearning community do we use the term Instructional Designer?

Now that’s not a rhetorical questions. Regular readers will know that I am a self-confessed newbie in this field and I am genuinely interested as to why this title exists.

Is it a throw back to the early days of eLearning where we ‘did’ Design Instruction or is there some other reason that has passed me by?

If you know (or even if you don’t but agree or disagree with what I am asking) then please drop a response in the comments box below.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/whats-in-a-name/feed/12Podcast #12: Attention! Attention! Attention!http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/podcast-12-attention-attention-attention/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/podcast-12-attention-attention-attention/#commentsSat, 04 Jun 2011 07:10:29 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1545Craig missed Dr Chris Atherton‘s session at LT11, however the video recording of her session has provided him with inspiration and ideas ever since. This podcast scratches the surface of Chris’ specialism and hopefully provides you ‘Dear Listener’ with a few ideas (and maybe even a challenge) ahead of your next presentation.

Craig even starts to try and determine the origin of the word ‘logo’ and then gives up to the wisdom of Wikipedia!!!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/06/podcast-12-attention-attention-attention/feed/0Podcast #11. Take Two!!http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/podcast-11-take-two/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/podcast-11-take-two/#commentsFri, 27 May 2011 11:00:29 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1536Damian Farrell chats with Craig about how he has enhanced some of his face-to-face training by using some simple, intuitive *FREE* tools.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/podcast-11-take-two/feed/0Ignorance is NOT bliss!http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/ignorance-is-not-bliss/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/ignorance-is-not-bliss/#commentsTue, 24 May 2011 19:15:00 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1461Before you point out the obvious, I knooooow that I don’t work in the education sector… but on this occasion I think that it really is a worthwhile investment of time to take a closer look at a 2009 OFSTED report.

Essentially the OFSTED report finds that there is a greater online risk to individuals whose schools use ‘locked down systems’ than for those students whose schools allow them but alongside the provision of education surrounding their safe use.

But let’s be honest here, the students will be using these sites & tools from their own devices be it mobile or home based regardless or whether they are blocked in schools or not, so the risk is still as prevalent despite the school blocking the site. All the school has done is prevent a risk arising from use of their machines.

Alternatively, if the school provides education around safe practice of the tool, then that education stands the student in good stead regardless of the device or location that the student is accessing it from. In addition the school has a whole new resource available at its finger tips, whilst also providing students the opportunity to become introduced to, develop and extend their digital literacies.

Now if you recall at the beginning of this blog post I acknowledged that I didn’t work in the education sector, but I do work in a sector that relies upon educational activities (let’s be honest, which sector doesn’t?), so this report held particular interest for me, particularly when I read it like this…

Essentially the OFSTED report common sense finds that there is a greater online risk to individuals employees whose schools employers block websites than for those students employees whose schools employers allow them but alongside the provision of education surrounding their safe use.

But let’s be honest here, the students employees will be using these sites & tools from their own devices be it mobile or home based regardless or whether they are blocked in schools in organisations or not, so the risk is still as prevalent despite the school employer blocking the site. All the school employer has done is prevent a risk arising from use of their machines.

Alternatively, if the school organisation provides education around safe practice of the tool, then that education stands the student employee in good stead regardless of the device or location that the student employee is accessing it from. In addition the school employer has a whole new resource available at its finger tips, whilst also providing students employees the opportunity to become introduced to, develop and extend their digital literacies.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times somebody has told me that “Industry should be leading education” (normally quoted when I reference how far many educational establishments are ahead in terms of using learning technologies when compared to many typical employers), however on this occasion let’s just take a leaf (or several) out of the OFSTED report and let’s start recognising that our employees are just as capable of leaking commercially sensitive or security restricted material from ‘open’ systems, so why not start unblocking these sites, but couple it with some guidance and support on how to use them safely.

What do you think?

Ramblings of a mad man, or am I on to something?

Do your organisations block sites on these sorts of grounds? If so, why not suggest an initiative involving an education programme around some of the sites and see if the powers that be, buy into it?

Let me know how you get on…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/ignorance-is-not-bliss/feed/0Never assume…. that the idea you have had (that you think is ‘obvious’) is obvious to everybody!http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/never-assume-that-the-idea-you-have-had-that-you-think-is-obvious-is-obvious-to-everybody/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/never-assume-that-the-idea-you-have-had-that-you-think-is-obvious-is-obvious-to-everybody/#commentsThu, 19 May 2011 14:18:01 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1521This was a lesson that was reinforced yesterday, during an exchange of tweets, allow me to explain.

Over the next few years my Organisations is planning to relocate its ‘Training Centre’ (don’t blame me for the name) to a new building. I had a few ideas that I thought might be of benefit during the initial planning/design stages.

Here is an extract from an email that I sent to the building area owner yesterday:

I am aware that the current Training Centre will be relocated to the ‘new building’ at some point in the future and I have some ideas that you may be interested in.

Lose the ICT suite. This only serves to isolate technology from current learning activities as opposed to embedding it within them. It also stands empty for the majority of the time, which is a waste of space and resources. IT access could still be gained by……

Provide netbooks/laptops to each learner attending events. These can be kept in purpose built storage/charging trolleys. Coupled with a WiFi connection this will allow learners to connect to the outside world as opposed to relying solely on the knowledge that is being shared amongst the facilitator/delegates, a great example of social constructivism. A modern approach to learning which fits with a modern building.

I have also made contact with Professor Stephen Heppell from Bournemouth University who has done some amazing work in redesigning physical learning spaces, most recently for Air Traffic Control training who I know would be able to consult with us.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you require any further clarification on any of these points.

Once I had sent that email, I thought I’d send this tweet

Just contacted L&D team to suggest they 'lose' the ICT suite when the new building is built and provide laptop/netbooks to learners + WiFi.

So I thought it might be a good idea to clarify what I meant from my initial tweet and email.

We currently have 3 x training rooms, 2 of which are ‘conventional’ rooms and 1 that is a dedicated ICT Suite

This ICT suite stands empty for approx 95% of the time as truth be told we don’t actually deliver a lot of IT systems training, of course when we do, we need a suitable area in which to deliver it.

We also have a couple of conventional rooms

in which non-IT training takes place and are usually utilised day-in and day-out.

My suggestion of allowing the conventional rooms to absorb the ICT is based upon the following:

As the ICT suite is unused for the majority of the time, it is a waste of not only resources (not least of which is the physical space itself), which is unable to be easily repurposed for other events.

The separation from IT and the internet from the conventional training rooms, I believe, exacerbates the opinion that learning and IT are separate from one another, a view that I suspect you Dear Reader do not share?

By providing 15-20 laptops/netbooks per room with a WiFi connection (stored in one of those storage/charging trolleys) every room could be quickly repurposed into an ICT suite whenever needed.

Most exciting of all however, is the fact that when you place 10 learners and a facilitator into a room you are relying on 11 people’s accumulated knowledge on a given subject. Provide each learner with an organisation approved, WiFi enabled device and all of a sudden that 11 people’s knowledge is now supplemented by access to the internet. Learners can start to realise that learning and personal development need no longer solely rely upon a formal event and a ‘sage on the stage’. Digital literacies can start to be formed and refined.

No cost to the learner in terms of data charges from personal devices, no exclusion based upon the learner being unable to afford a personal device, no waste of physical space by allowing an ICT suite to stand empty, further embedding of learning technologies into what many people consider face-to-face activities.

Regular readers will know the ongoing struggle that I am having with my organisation in terms of enabling anything beyond ‘click next’ type elearning, it will probably come as no surprise to many that I have considered letting this blog fizzle out for similar reasons as Karyn Romeis, however I have always been aware that my best chance of securing another job with a more forward thinking organisation lies with being able to demo an up-to-date knowledge of the industry. This blog enables me to do that, albeit with a constant niggling voice in my head saying “what if nobody finds this info useful” “what if I’ve misinterpreted what organisations want/need”

So you’ll understand my relief to receive this tweet over the weekend from Mike Collins

When I first started blogging my initial reasons (as I suspect most new bloggers will testify to) was to provide a space to reflect upon my experiences and through that reflection provide a valuable learning opportunity. However over my short blogging experience I have to admit that I now look for blogging opportunities which may be of benefit to others.

In a forthcoming podcast I’ll be chatting to some other bloggers and asking “why do they do it”, but in the meantime Dear Reader what about you?

Do you blog?

If so, why?

Do you gain ideas and inspiration from other’s blogs?

If so what?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/05/oh-well-at-least-somebodys-finding-my-work-of-use/feed/16Do you have a few minutes for an #Intervue?http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/do-you-have-a-few-minutes-for-an-intervue/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/do-you-have-a-few-minutes-for-an-intervue/#commentsThu, 28 Apr 2011 21:52:47 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1502As I was trawling through my early morning tweets upon arriving at work on Tuesday morning (on my mobile phone obviously, due to the fact that I work in 1906 and Social Media is blocked on my work machine) I noticed that John Dalziel from RSC NW had tweeted this

Knowing that John always has something interesting to share I immediately clicked on the link, but realised quite quickly I needed to be on a PC. In the meantime I checked out what John had to say about this tool on his blog.

As soon as I got home (or as I call it, 2011) I clicked through on the link to discover this site.

Essentially you:

Set up a free account

Type some questions that you want to ask others (you can add some additional text at this point)

Email/tweet the link to the questions and then sit back….

The recipients of the link will see your question(s) and (here comes the good bit) can provide the feedback/responses via their webcam (up to a maximum of 60 secs video per response). Intervue will capture their video responses and allow you (or if you choose to share them, others) to view those responses.

Anyway, as they say “a picture paints a 1000 words” so here’s my initial intervue, and here are my responses why not give it a try yourself? The video responses themselves can be downloaded in mp4 format, so you could even edit the responses together to form a short movie.

My initial thoughts as to how this could be used are:

Preliminary interviews with prospective employees.

Language training – pose a question in either the native/foreign language and then ask the respndent to respond in the opposite (or same) language.

During a leadership training programme ask team members to provide evidence that their ‘leader’ is demonstrating the requisite behaviours. A damn site more accurate than asking the ‘leader’ to write their own evidence (as I have witnessed in a recent ILM programme!)

Use as an assessment tool to allow learners to provide descriptive responses.

Please do take the time to respond to the intervue I have set up above, as I intend to wrap the responses up in a video which I will publish on this blog at a later date.

If you can think up any additional uses for this (and I am sure there are loooooads!) please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments box below.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/do-you-have-a-few-minutes-for-an-intervue/feed/0Podcast #10 Sunshine. In Plymouth. In April. Never!http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/podcast-10-sunshine-in-plymouth-in-april-never/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/podcast-10-sunshine-in-plymouth-in-april-never/#commentsWed, 27 Apr 2011 19:23:23 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1488This podcast sees Craig being joined by Erica Neve to discuss their recent attendance at the Plymouth eLearning Conference at the University of Plymouth.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/podcast-10-sunshine-in-plymouth-in-april-never/feed/0Podcast #9: QR Codes? Sounds like something out of a Bond film!http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/podcast-9-qr-codes-sounds-like-something-out-of-a-bond-film-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/podcast-9-qr-codes-sounds-like-something-out-of-a-bond-film-2/#commentsThu, 21 Apr 2011 06:21:30 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1471This podcast sees Craig being joined by Kate Graham, Kim George and Paul Simbeck-Hampson to (hopefully) dispell any misgivings or musunderstandings relating to QR codes, how they can be used to not only enhance learning activities but also as a marketing tool.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/podcast-9-qr-codes-sounds-like-something-out-of-a-bond-film-2/feed/7Do you ever provide a take-away resource and…http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/do-you-ever-provide-a-take-away-resource-and/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/do-you-ever-provide-a-take-away-resource-and/#commentsThu, 14 Apr 2011 20:19:38 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1462….wonder it is destined for anywhere other than the bin?

The desktop calendars had been designed to provide the attendees with a very ‘loose’ roadmap to assist them in implementing Learning Technologies into their role/workplace and were placed on the tables as a ‘freebie’ take away.

I have often wondered how many people took the calendars out of politeness and were ultimately destined for the bin, so you will appreciate how chuffed I was to receive this email from Lisa Johnson.

You will be pleased to hear that your desk calendar is being put to good use. Before I re-ordered it from Mar to Apr I realized I hadn’t looked at blogs so I made the effort to set up a blog page in WordPress! I just need to get the creative cap on and consider how I am going to use it. Now that we are in April and on podcasting, I’ve had our Director record a webex presentation. He was delivering an all staff meeting in London and for those staff that couldn’t make it we recorded it and sent it out at the same time. It’s the first time we have used the technology for communications and it’s been well received with staff feeling connected and seeing the Director being more accessible.

I’d like to thank Lisa for providing this feedback and hope that she’s continues to let us all know how she is getting on with using the resource.

Which brings me to you Dear Reader…

Did you attend the session? If so, have you had any success in implementing any of the suggestions?

If you didn’t attend, have you got any tips or suggestions for ensuring that your take-away resources make it beyond the bin?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/do-you-ever-provide-a-take-away-resource-and/feed/3A word of warning, be careful…http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/a-word-of-warning-be-careful/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/a-word-of-warning-be-careful/#commentsFri, 08 Apr 2011 19:14:03 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1313… as to what media you use if you are ever asked to produce a festive tip for the eLearning networks 24 tips advent calendar

Why a warning?

Well, because you might just be asked to facilitate a session on it at a future eLN event!!

Joking aside, I was privileged to be asked by Rob Hubbbard to co-facilitate the recent eLN event How to produce rich media learning materials. This was something of a departure for an eLN event as it was planned to be very ‘hands on’, so it was great to be asked to be a part of it.

Each of the speakers had been asked to promote their individual topic areas for 20 minutes. Not to delve into the technicalities and intricacies of each method, but to prick the interest of the attendees so that would be sufficiently enthused prior to the practical session in the afternoon. (that was the plan!)

Clive got us off to a great start by asking each table of delegates to consider a different media element; text, images, audio, animation, video and to suggest the pro’s and con’s of each. This was a fairly simple exercise, however he then asked us to consider which of the ‘other’ types of media would/wouldn’t work it and why. This stimulated a great deal of debate around the ‘mixing’ of media types.

Tony conducted a great interactive exercise which involved each us all reviewing a small number of simple slides containing text and an image. As each of these slides were playing there was an accompanying audio track. The content within that audio track varied slightly for each slide ranging from being very similar to incredibly in-depth.

Tony then asked us all to answer some paper based questions relating to the content that we had seen/read. I would like to say that I had taken a keener interest in this exercise as it would have been interesting to focus 100% on it, however as I was due to speak next I’m afraid that I was a little ‘distracted’!

If a picture paints a 1000 words, how many does a moving, talking picture paint? – Craig Taylor

I was quite pleased that I was asked to speak on this subject as the very nature of screencasting meant that I could use screencasts themselves to deliver the content.

Simples!

I chose to use Prezi as the vehicle to deliver the material. I had used Prezi in the (distant) past and hadn’t been too enthralled by its functionality, but I was pleased to discover that they appear to have made several welcome updates to the service. I’m still hoping that they will figure out a way to have accompanying audio, in the same ilk of PowerPoint and Slideshare and that they can come up with a way to use a remote presenter, so that I am not tied to my laptop whilst presenting. It is that lack of audio track which persuaded me to record my session and release it in a future blog post podcast.

James and Solomon rounded the morning off with an overview of recording video and editing. The feeling from some people on my table and via the backchannel was that it would have been preferable to show examples of how video could be used for learning purposes with ‘lower end’ equipment i.e. Flip cameras/smartphones etc. From a personal perspective I was happy with what was delivered BUT I do have an understanding as to how video can be used in a learning context.

After lunch was the point at which the eLN entered new ground by providing an afternoon of experiential learning by allowing attendees to practice making screencasts and recording/editing videos. From the 2 groups that I worked with this ‘hands on’ approach was warmly received and provided a fantastic opportunity to apply the theory in the real world (isn’t this what we keep saying our learners should be doing?)

Bearing in mind that they only had 30 minutes to discuss the subject, download software, create the media, edit, publish and that the purpose wasn’t to create a ‘real-time’ screencast, here is a sample of what they produced:

All in all, a really useful event, the format of which I hope the eLN repeats in the future.

A big Thank You to Mark Jones for coming up with concept of this event and for facilitating the entire day.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/a-word-of-warning-be-careful/feed/0Have you ever struggled…http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/have-you-ever-struggled/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/have-you-ever-struggled/#commentsThu, 07 Apr 2011 11:34:06 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1362…… with a function in an IT application? Have you ever struggled to provide assistance to somebody else who was struggling with an IT application?

If the answer to either is “Yes”, then could I be cheeky enough to ask you to take part in this survey?

There are only 2 questions and I’m not looking for any lengthy responses, a couple or words or a sentence will be sufficient.

The results will be used as part of a workshop I am facilitating for the eLearning Network on the 08th April 2011 on the subject of screencasting.

All results will be shown in a future blog post.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/have-you-ever-struggled/feed/0Research well worth looking at…http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/research-well-worth-looking-at/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/research-well-worth-looking-at/#commentsFri, 01 Apr 2011 06:59:28 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1383Regular readers will know that I ‘moonlight’ as the Social Media correspondent for an industry-wide communications channel called Nuclear TV. (although I have now started calling myself Social Media and Technologies correspondent because……. well, because I can)

I recently had the Pullizter-worthy idea to conduct a number of TV reports on the use of Learning Technologies and Social Media within other industries, businesses and corporates.

In order to generate interest in the project I put out a tweet asking for willing interviewees and was contacted by Laura Overton from Towards Maturity.

Here’s the chinwag that we had….

If ‘you’ feel that ‘you’ have a story that you would like to share with others relating as to how your organisation is using learning technologies to add value to the business, (particularly where you have used them in a regulated, compliance driven market) then why not drop me a line.

The interviews will be hosted on the NLTV channel as well as this blog, if the interview is less than 15mins then I will place it on YouTube and you will also be provided with the edited footage and separate mp3 file for your own use.

Go on….. you know you want to….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/research-well-worth-looking-at/feed/0It’s amazing who you bump into on the train….http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/its-amazing-who-you-bump-into-on-the-train/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/its-amazing-who-you-bump-into-on-the-train/#commentsFri, 01 Apr 2011 06:59:13 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1382Regular readers will know that I ‘moonlight’ as the Social Media correspondent for an industry-wide communications channel called Nuclear TV. (if the tax-man is reading this, then it’s as part of my day-job, so calm down!)

I recently had the Pullizter-worthy idea to conduct a number of TV reports on the use of Learning Technologies and Social Media within other industries, businesses and corporates. I have to admit that my intentions were a little selfish as I was hoping to demonstrate to my own industry the benefits of adopting, engaging and encouraging the use of such tools.

In order to generate interest in the project I put out a tweet asking for willing interviewees and was contacted by Niall Gavin from Firstgroup plc.

If you feel that you have a story that you would like to share with others relating as to how your organisation is using learning technologies to add value to the business, (particularly where you have used them in a regulated, compliance driven market) then why not drop me a line.

The interviews will be hosted on the NLTV channel as well as this blog, if the interview is less than 15mins then I will place it on YouTube and you will also be provided with the edited footage and separate mp3 file for your own use.

Go on….. you know you want to….

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/04/its-amazing-who-you-bump-into-on-the-train/feed/0Podcast #8: Talking to a brick wall!http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-8-talking-to-a-brick-wall/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-8-talking-to-a-brick-wall/#commentsWed, 30 Mar 2011 12:34:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1375Today’s podcast sees Craig being joined by Kate Graham and James McLuckie to discuss the subject of internal communications.

How are businesses enabling technologies to enhance and enrich their internal conversations?

What tools are organisations and individuals turning to enable their staff to connect, communicate and collaborate?

Kate and James provide some answers to the above questions whilst Craig complains about them rubbing salt in his wounds!

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/scorm-test/feed/0Podcast #7: What does good elearning look like?http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-7-what-does-good-elearning-look-like/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-7-what-does-good-elearning-look-like/#commentsThu, 24 Mar 2011 12:30:17 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1359Craig chats with Fiona Leteney on the subject of the new Media City e-learning showcase that she has implemented. The aim of the showcase is the pursuit of excellence, and the desire to inspire and share best practice so that e-learning can always be viewed in a positive light.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-7-what-does-good-elearning-look-like/feed/0It’s true, great minds must think alike…http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/its-true-great-minds-must-think-alike/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/its-true-great-minds-must-think-alike/#commentsFri, 18 Mar 2011 14:56:32 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1338….because earlier this week Lesley Price and I both tweeted about the same subject within an hour or so of each other. This was the thought that was running through my mind as I was driving home a few days ago, which I subsequently tweeted about…

Later on that evening Lesley tweeted this

This led to an exchange of tweets between us, which resulted in Lesley being kind enough to share an experience with me via this email.

Hi Craig

A couple of years ago… I fell down stairs and sprained my ankle really badly. I had to be at a Technology Conference organised by Becta as I was facilitating a table…. Natalie, my daughter took time off work to drive me. She sat on the table I was facilitating…. even although it was an educational technology conference and she was a primary school teacher, she had no idea of the language and jargon that was being used. It was almost like the Emperors New Clothes and she was the child watching from the side lines. She sat all morning and the first part of the afternoon taking it all in. She then just said…. I have no idea what you are all talking about, what does Social Media mean? I typed that into questions that were coming from the floor… Facilitator picked it up and came to talk to her. She was youngest person in the room and just said… “now that I know what it means…I can tell you I use SoMe all the time…I just don’t see what all the fuss is about, that is my life! Why all the discussion??? Why don’t you just get on with it??”

I have just talked to her again about it this evening and she still remembers the occasion… and still does not understand the facination by oldies. SoMe is part of her life…. she is not into Twitter, doesn’t see value in it. If you look at profile of average user of Twitter I can understand that. She uses FB, FB chat, skype , skype chat and txt all the time. Sometimes using more than one at once… makes for interesting conversations lol!!

I am trying to persuade her to start blogging… she has wonderful ideas. Although she teaches reception she also runs Computer Club for Girls with Yr 6 girls. When the Tsunami and Japanese earthquake story started breaking, she put BBC news on her interactive white board and had it running all day as her reception class were interested in the live commentry that was coming through and bombarded her with questions. She doesn’t close down social networking when she is teaching, not that she spends any time on it, it just runs in the background, the kids are now used to ‘silly noises’ that come from her laptop and tell her she when she has a message! So kids completely understand SoMe… just don’t call it that…. they see it as normal… why are the rest of us making such a fuss about it instead of getting on with it!!

Lesley

So my question to you ‘Dear Reader’ is are we right, or are we waaaay off the mark?

Should we drop the ‘social’?

Is the ‘social’ holding things up due to it’s ‘connotations’?

Should we just be referring to media, learning, networks etc and work under the assumption (a dangerous thing I know) that the ‘social’ is inherrent.

Why not let me know your thoughts in the comments box below?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/its-true-great-minds-must-think-alike/feed/19Scheduling a meeting is a doddle, I mean a Doodle..http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/scheduling-a-meeting-is-a-doddle-i-mean-a-doodle/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/scheduling-a-meeting-is-a-doddle-i-mean-a-doodle/#commentsSat, 12 Mar 2011 22:52:57 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1295…whatever it’s called it’s quick, simple and cheap to do!

Scheduling a meeting with work colleagues is usually very easy to do as (in my experience) everybody is ‘connected’ via an email management client such as Outlook which allows you to organise meetings around peoples availability as you can usually see their calendar which (you hope) they’ve kept up to date.

The problem lies when you are trying to arrange a meeting with people outside of your organisation who do not exist in your calendar system, again in my experience this usually involves time exhausting multiple phone calls and/or emails around the relevant parties in order to arrange a mutually convenient time.

Well no more!

I discovered Doodle several months ago and had the opportunity to use it ‘in anger’ for the first time during the planning stage of my first panel podcast.

Doodle allows you to publish potential dates and times onto the internet, publicise that information to your meeting attendees, who are then requested to select the option(s) that best suits them. A cut off date can be applied to the Doodle which means that you can be getting on with the more important things in life, whilst your meeting attendees are only taking 30 seconds out of theirs to select their preferred times.

Throughout the process you can drop back in at any time to see which option(s) are shaping up as the faves. Once the window of voting has closed, Doodle will even tot up which option is the most preferred.

Here’s a quick overview of how easy it is to set up.

So over to you..

Are you currently using this tool yourself, if so what have your experiences been?

If this is the first time you have heard about it, can you see any occasions when you might find it useful?

Why not share your thoughts with everybody via the comments section of this blog post…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/scheduling-a-meeting-is-a-doddle-i-mean-a-doodle/feed/8Podcast #6: Tick, tick, tick, tick in the boxhttp://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-6-tick-tick-tick-tick-in-the-box/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-6-tick-tick-tick-tick-in-the-box/#commentsWed, 09 Mar 2011 14:54:27 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1285Craig chats with Stephanie Dedhar, Col Hawksworth and Sam Burrough on the subject of compliance training, their best and worse experiences of it and what we in the Learning Technologies field can do to enhance its reputation.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-6-tick-tick-tick-tick-in-the-box/feed/0Podcast #5: Now the dust has settled…http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-5-now-the-dust-has-settled/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-5-now-the-dust-has-settled/#commentsTue, 01 Mar 2011 19:07:08 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1276Craig chats with Lillian Soon, Kate Graham, Karyn Romeis, Laura Overton, Christie Fidura and Don Taylor on the ‘actions’ that they personally took away from their attendance at Learning Technologies 2011, along with the challenges that they anticipated in trying to achieve them!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/podcast-5-now-the-dust-has-settled/feed/0“My favourite elearning interaction is”….http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/my-favourite-elearning-interaction-is/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/my-favourite-elearning-interaction-is/#commentsTue, 01 Mar 2011 07:41:19 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1269…. was one of the questions that was posed by Saffron Interactive at their stand during Learning Technologies 2011.

It was a novel idea to capture exhibition visitors ideas around certain L&D topics by asking them to pick a question from a list of questions which included:

Mobile Learning

Social learning

Favourite elearning interactions

Effective compliance training

point a Flip camera at them and ask them to answer it.

Simple, quick and effective!

Anyway, here’s my response

Which leads me to ask….

What are your fave elearning interactions?

Are you so passionately opposed to elearning that there is no possible interaction that would float your boat?

Do you have simple tastes and would be happy with any interaction?

Why not let me know in the comments box below?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/03/my-favourite-elearning-interaction-is/feed/8My first taste of Pecha Kucha..http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/my-first-taste-of-pecha-kucha/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/my-first-taste-of-pecha-kucha/#commentsMon, 28 Feb 2011 15:10:21 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1263…was provided to me by Clive Shepherd at the 2010 eLN showcase. Clive’s effort when combined with fantastic Pecha Kuchas (PKs) from Barry Sampson and Phil Green was enough to inspire me that PK was something I needed to have an attempt at….. now it was just a case of waiting for the right opportunity…

That opportunity arose at a recent eLearning Network event, where myself, @KimSGeorge and @fionaleteney each delivered a Pecha Kucha session. I chose to talk about how my organisation had utilised technology to enhance it’s assessment processes.

Did I enjoy it? – Yep

Would I reccomend it to others? – Yep

Would I do it again – You bet’cha

So what about you? Have you ever done a PK? Would you consider doing one? If you would and are a member of the eLearning Network then why not get in contact with Lucy Cartlidge to find out more…

Waaaaay back in the mists of time that was Learning Technologies 2010, I attended a workshop on the subject of storyboarding facilitated by @juliewedgwood.

This session came a little late in my ID career as I had spent the previous 6 months putting together rapid elearning module with NO storyboard process – oh well, better late than never!

I recently asked Julie to facilitate that session again with a number of my colleagues which culminated in them producing a podcast to reflect upon the session’s content and what they were going to do with it. Apologies for the sound quality in parts of this podcast, I was using a portable Zoom recorder for the very first time and should have practiced with it beforehand (as you’ll hear)

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/podcast-4-i-wanna-tell-you-a-storyboard-storyboard/feed/0Podcast #3: Project Management… what’s that all about then?http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/podcast-3-project-management-whats-that-all-about-then/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/podcast-3-project-management-whats-that-all-about-then/#commentsWed, 16 Feb 2011 18:37:48 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=823Craig chats with Jane Brotchie on the subject of Project Management. This podcast will count as a piece of evidence towards a group activity within the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management programme.

In this, my first podcast, I am joined by a small number of my organisations elearning authors, Steven Mahay, Geoff Owens, Andrew Pilkington & Chris Hyndman to discuss an Action Mapping session that I had just facilitated. The purpose of the conversation was to further promote the thinking that elearning is not just the traditional ‘click-next’ type of elearning that many of us are used to and that podcasting is a relatively simple (and far quicker way of producing a learning resource) whilst also providing a period of reflection for the attendees themselves. The podcast was also a great learning curve for me as I had failed to set my Samson GoMic as the default recording device so I was reliant on the internal laptop speaker, hence the poor quality…. but I’ve learned my lesson and hope that you will join me in my next podcast in which I will have resolved my ‘teething problems’

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/craigs-thoughts-on-learning-podcast-1-action-mapping/feed/3So there I was, wandering around YouTube, minding my own business….http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/so-there-i-was-wandering-around-youtube-minding-my-own-business/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/so-there-i-was-wandering-around-youtube-minding-my-own-business/#commentsMon, 07 Feb 2011 22:16:26 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1185…. when I stumbled upon the ‘edit video detail’ toolbar at the top of the page. Now I had seen this previously and had chosen to ignore it as my video editing is done in either Flipshare or more recently in Windows Movie Maker.

What an oversight on my behalf!!!

Within the video editing options there is an option to add annotations. Now this in itself is nothing startling as many video editing tools allow you to annotate on top of the video footage, but what this allows you to do is to add a ‘spotlight’ on top of anything that is being shown in the YouTube footage.

This spotlight (imagine a hot spot) will then allow a URL (including another YouTube video) to be added to it.

This then allows your YouTube video to become interactive in so far as the viewer can be steered towards making a choice which then jumps them from one YouTube video to another to another etc etc depending upon their choices. For a far more in-depth account as to how to do this then check out this blog post.

Of course I almost fell over myself in an attempt to try this out so I hope you’ll all be able to see past the poor lighting and dodgy camera angles to the real potential that this approach to using YouTube can bring. My only niggle at this moment in time is that upon completion of the clip it jumps (as any YouTube clip does) to a ‘related videos’ window, this in turn stops the viewer from making any on-screen selection at the end of the clip, so it prevents the viewer from being able reflect upon the available choices.

Confused?

Then try watching the following short clip without making any selection and you’ll see what happens at the end of the video. Then you can replay the video and start taking part for real…

So what do you think?

Is this something you could use?

If so, what for?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/so-there-i-was-wandering-around-youtube-minding-my-own-business/feed/10An open letter to those organisations who block Social Media sites….http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-those-organisations-who-block-social-media-sites/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-those-organisations-who-block-social-media-sites/#commentsMon, 07 Feb 2011 09:07:43 +0000http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/07/an-open-letter-to-those-organisations-who-block-social-media-sites/Are you serious?

Seriously, are you serious?

Many of you will cite the reasons for blocking such sites as:

commercial sensitivity
security restrictions

But many of you (you know who you are) will be concerned over their employees wasting time!

Do you really think that if an employees ‘moral compass’ is sufficiently skewed to allow them to waste time at work that your blocking of social media sites will put them back on the ‘straight and narrow’?

I didn’t think you did!

Let’s ne honest, if an employee wants to waste time at work they WILL find a way! Whether it is engaging in personal phone calls (you don’t block phone calls do you?), reading a magazine (you don’t block publications do you?), or gossiping (you don’t block talking do you?) employees WILL find a way to waste time!

But let me ask you to re-examine those communication methods shown in brackets above….

…. you don’t block them because they are excellent learning/communication/networking/collaborative tools – as are Social Media tools!

If an employee abuses them, do you banish the tool from your organisation? Of course you don’t, you expect their Line Manager to engage in Performance Management as you should if an employee abuses the use of Social Media tools.

If I haven’t managed to convince you yet, please read on…

If you think that blocking Social Media sites prevents employees from engaging with them during the working day then you are very much mistaken. In this era of internet enabled mobile devices employees can engage with social media sites regardless of whether you choose to block access to them from your organisations network.

Proof?

OK then, you asked!

I am currently sat on the loo in work typing this blog post. Only, I hasten to add to provide some solitude not for any concurrent reason!

I have still been able to produce a blog post, here it is!

I have still been able to review my Twitter stream.

I have still been able to keep up with the conversation on the Learning and Skills group all from my personal mobile phone.

Has this impacted negatively on my work output? Well actually “Yes” it has! It has taken 4-5 times longer to type this blog post than it would have done on my desktop!

As part of the ‘Web content maintenance and evaluation’ unit within the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management(CWCCM) programme I am undertaking, I have been asked to ‘create a plan for evaluating the success of the Internet website on which I will be working.’ (i.e. this blog)

So without further ado, here is my plan:

My first measure of success will be whether I am personally gaining anything from the blogging experience. I have always maintained that my blog is first and foremost for me. A place to capture my reflections, shape my vision and generally ‘let off steam‘. If others gain something from reading my blog, then I am obviously really pleased, but is is not the primary focus of my blog.

I find blogging to be something of a drain on that precious resource ‘time’. Perhaps this is because I am chose to undertake the CWCCM programme at the same time as a Rapid eLearning Development programme AND prepare for a session at Learning Technologies 2011 AND prepare for my first Pecha Kucha at the February eLearning Network event. So my second measure of success will be whether I am still ‘blogging’ in 6 months time. It is 11 months since my first blog post, so I am hoping that in itself suggests that blogging will be a permanent part of my CPD going forward, but who knows…..?

Finally I would consider my blog a success if I were able to achieve the goal that I set myself in a previous piece of CWCCM homework which was to increase the average daily views of my blog from 10 to 15 per day by August 2011. Since that previous blog post my current average per day is standing at 21, so all I have to do is maintain that effort and I will have not only met, but exceeded that target!!!!!!!!!

Do you blog? If so, how do you measure the success of your blogging? Have I been too prescriptive or are my targets not SMART enough?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/02/homework-time-cwccm-task-7-3/feed/2Homework time… Rapid eLearning Design Text Assignmentshttp://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-rapid-elearning-design-text-assignments/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-rapid-elearning-design-text-assignments/#commentsMon, 31 Jan 2011 10:43:12 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1134Regular readers will be aware that I am currently undertaking an online Rapid eLearning Development programme which is being facilitated by @robhubbard. One of the assignments this week relates to the use of text within elearning and requires a number of assignment to be undertaken and then posted to the blog section of the Ning site that acts as the portal to all the other brilliant content. However, as I have my own blog I prefer to post my assignments here as it:

a) provides more opportunities for wider feedback

b) helps to promote what is a fantastic online learning programme.

There were 3 assignments this week, the first being:

Find some text that is difficult to understand and that contains jargon and or acronyms. Ideally this should be some of the source written content for your final assignment. Alternatively Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page is a great source of content written by experts for experts. Click on the ‘Random article’ link on the left-hand side until you find some content that would benefit from rewriting.

Follow the Plain English guidelines to rewrite about 200 words of it in Plain English.

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”.[1]

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.

Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.[2]

My reworked article:

Social bookmarking is a method for you to store, manage and search for bookmarks of online resources. Unlike file sharing, it isn’t the resources themselves that are shared, just the bookmarks that reference them.

You can add descriptions to these bookmarks so that other users can understand the content of the resource without having to download it for themselves. These descriptions could be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags which are words or phrases that generally describe the resource.

i.e. a bookmarked website on ‘implemeting social media policies within Blue-Chip organisations’ would probably be tagged with the following

Social media

Policy

Business

By adding tags both you and other users can search for different websites, all on the same subject just by selecting a tag of interest.

In a social bookmarking system, you would save links to web pages that you want to remember and/or share with others. You could make these bookmarks open to the public, save them privately, share them with specific people, shared them only inside certain networks, or a combination of public and private areas.

Many social bookmarking sites have added extra features such as being able to import and export bookmarks from directly from a web browsers and the emailing of bookmarks to other.

The 2nd assignment asked us to:

write two SMART learning outcomes for your final assignment.

One of the many elements of the ReD programme that I have found to be quite innovative is the way in which Rob has used the Mindmeister mind-mapping tool to visually portray the learning outcomes, but to also use the linking features of it to link to the various resources that are in place to help achieve that outcome.

write two multiple-choice assessment questions based on your learning outcomes

I’m still not sure whether these questions will be pitched as a stand-alone multiple choice assessment (not my preferred option) or as part of a scenario (my preference), but either way they will look a little something like this:

1. Which of the following is the correct web address for the Diigo homepage?

a) www.diigo.co.uk

b) www.diigo.net

c) www.diigo.com

d) www.diigo.gov.uk

2. What is the user name which you will need to log into the Diigo account?

a) Tayloring.it

b) Tailoringit

c) Tayloringit

d) Tayloring it

So over to you Dear Reader, what are your thoughts?

Was the reworking on the Wikipedia article clear enough?

Were the objectives SMART enough?

Were the multiple choice questions relevant and challenging?

As always, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-rapid-elearning-design-text-assignments/feed/1The story of how I got to speak at #LT11UK….http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/the-story-of-how-i-got-to-speak-at-lt11uk/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/the-story-of-how-i-got-to-speak-at-lt11uk/#commentsSun, 30 Jan 2011 20:23:51 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1132….. begins in the Summer of 2010.

I was speaking on the telephone with the fantastic @juliewedgwood on the subject of my progress with using learning technologies since attending LT10, when she suggested that @DonaldHTaylor may be interested in the story as a potential session for LT11… I joked about this…. mulled it over…. dropped Don an email….

I remembered the presentations at LT10 being broadly broken down into 2 types:

The sage on the stage with a pocket full of Bullet Points.

And the ‘guide by your side’ with a pocketful of interaction and activities.

It will probably come as no surprise to you to hear that the content of the latter still resonates with me today and indeed Julie Wedgwood (who has become a friend and has delivered that same session back into my organisation for me) falls into that category.

It was that same impact that I wanted to have on those delegates who were kind enough to attend my session at LT11. Here are the simple steps that I took in planning and preparing my session.

Given that my session was about my ‘journey’ over the past 12 months I thought it would fit quite nicely into a calendar format.

I identified 12 tools that I had used over the preceding 12 months and slotted 1 of these into each month, which then formed the basis of a PowerPoint deck.

I asked my friend Sam, to create a desktop calendar from my PPT slides and then ordered 100 of them

I added some autotweets to each of the slides order to feed the #LT11UK Twitter backchannel.

Given the target audience for my session I anticipated that many of them might not have a Twitter account (not yet anyway!), so I set up a Text Wall (courtesy of @xlearn) to allow non-Tweeters to experience participating in a back-channel.

I realised that as I had only 25 minutes to cover a 12 month period that I would not be able to cover each of the 12 months, so I created a slidecast using Slideshare which allowed me to cover each of the 12 months in greater detail due to the lack of time pressure. Here it is:

At that point it was time to put everything in the laps of the Gods and as Nike would say

“Just Do It”

The footage can be viewed here (please not that is appears that this site is still being edited (at least I hope it is) but you’ll get the idea)

The actual presentation went as I had anticipated, however the feedback I received be it face-to-face, via the backchannel or peoples blogs was phenomenal and quite humbling. I had never thought for a second that such a ‘simple introduction’ to Learning Technologies would have pushed so many peoples buttons. Some people have commented upon the unusual, non-linear, delegate-driven presentation style that I used, others have mentioned how passionate I was…

… whatever the reason, the key factor for me was that people enjoyed it and gained some small measure of motivation of it. I wish you all the very best for your future implementation of Learning Technologie and if I can be of any help or assistance then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

On a final note a BIG “Thank You” to Julie Wedgwood for being the catalyst to me speaking at LT11 and to Don Taylor for taking a ‘punt’ on me.

Did you attend my session?

What (if anything) did you take away to action?

How is the action progressing?

Why not provide your responses in the comments box below?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/the-story-of-how-i-got-to-speak-at-lt11uk/feed/3Homework time…. CWCCM Task 6.3http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-6-2/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-6-2/#commentsSat, 29 Jan 2011 17:38:35 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1099As part of the ‘communicating with website users’ unit within the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management(CWCCM) programme I am undertaking, I have been asked to ‘create a plan for maximising interaction with users on the internet site on which I will be working’ (i.e. this blog)

So without further ado, here is my plan:

Make better use of online polls and surveys (I am currently doing this within the online Joining Instructions that I create for work colleauges) however perhaps I could start to use them for standard blog posts.

Continue enabling comments on my blog post.

Include a question(s) towards the end of the post in order to encourage feedback via the comments section.

Thank everybody who contributes even if their contribution is not what I had hoped for/expected.

Publicy thank those who ReTweet my tweets advertising my blog post.

Have I missed anything from this plan?

Are you the sort of person who leaves comments to blog posts (if so, you know what to do next)….

If you are not that sort of person…. there’s a first time for everything…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-6-2/feed/0Following #LT11UK, it’s back down to Earth…http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/following-lt11uk-its-back-down-to-earth/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/following-lt11uk-its-back-down-to-earth/#commentsSat, 29 Jan 2011 14:35:08 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=1102…. with a bump!

At least it will be on Monday morning when I’m back in work, having left behind the visionaries, disruptivists, forward-thinkers and all round ‘good eggs’ that I was surrounded by at Learning Technologies (LT) 2011.

Following last years attendance at LT 2010 I went back to work envigorated, inspired and with a spring in my step, so much so in fact that my organisation created a Communications Technologist role (it’s a Learning Technologist role… don’t ask its complicated)!

Unfortunately, what they didn’t create was any strategic support or vision to accompany that new post! In order to reduce the sense of frustration that arises from that situation, I made a deal with myself to ‘reign in’ my excitement following LT11.

That said, I still find myself ‘buzzing’ 48 hours after the conference finished so in order to make best use of that ‘buzz’ before it disappears (i.e. Monday morning) I thought I’d blog about my experiences at LT11.

As regular readers will be aware I always try to commit to a couple of action planning points from any event that I attend, in the hope that they will assist me in transferring any learning back to my workplace. I have outlined those actions in blue below.

Day 1

Keynote – Roger Shank, Getting it right: how the corporate learning world must change

Never sit at the very front left of the auditorium at a future LT for 2 very good reasons

If Roger moved more than a metre from where he was stood I couldn’t see him!

The event photographer seems to take up residence in this area and his camera flash is brighter than the surface of the Sun (my retinas will bear testament to this!)

Exhibition nosey on Day 1

Recommend that my organisations project team look at the digital room booking displays that were being exhibited by Steljes, ahead of a new-purpose built learning centre being built on my site.

Consider how AUgmented Reality might be used as part of a new-starters induction tour. This approach (if we ever get handsets this side of Alexander Graham Bells prototype), could also be of benefit to all employees as part of their standard workphone handset package.

Serious gaming is something that has only just started to seriously register on my radar so I was extremely keen to find out a little more about it and how it could enhance what I am currently doing as well as enhance my skillset for the….. future

Unfortunately for me, I found that the session seemed to be pitched at those who already made the decision to go ahead with gaming and not those who were just entering the fray. I also thought that a great opportunity was wasted to prove the value of gaming by actually running the session as a game itself, an example of using the concept to sell the concept.

I assume (there’s the gaming naivety in me coming out) that this would have taken some time to prepare and given that Clark very kindly stepped in at the last moment to cover for another speaker, maybe this would have been his choice with more preparation time?

Day 2

Consider whether the Moodle off-shoot Totara LMS offered by Kineo may be a better option for my organisation than Moodle itself.

Ascertain whether the Elluminate tool that we have just acquired a licence for is able to

James Clay & Maj Richard Gill – Mobile and Immersive learning

I have been following James Clay for some 12 months via Twitter, his blog, his podcasts and have even attended a couple of his workshops on the subject of Mobile Learning and podcasting, but I had never had the opportunity to see him speak live…. until LT11!

I gather from his blog posts, that he has never been an advocate (who is?) of bullet-point riddled slides and he certainly proved that point by providing a visually engaging presentation allowing only single, full-screen images or perhaps the odd word or two to adorn his slides as opposed to lines upon lines of text (this approach received very positive feedback via the Twitter backchannel)

Accept that the Innovation Prevention Department isn’t always IT, even though it feels like it sometimes!

Yep, that’s right folks I was priviledged to speak at LT11, but I’ll cover my session in a future blog post. I shared my session with Paul Simbeck-Hampson who spoke about the opportunities that QR codes present. It became apparent quite quickly that for many of the audience QR codes was either completely new to them or they had only a fleeting understanding. Paul then went on to explain how QR codes were not only being used by large organisations to promote their brand but also how they were able to connect a learner from a static learning resource such as a book to a more dynamic resource such as a webpage. Whilst the video below shows how I have dabbled with QR codes in the past

I still gained an incredible amount from from Paul’s session, so what am I going to do with it?

Contact Paul and ascertain which of the many QR code producing engines is the most feature-rich.

Encourage the use of QR codes on the exhibition display stands for Nuclear TV (a project I am involved in), as well as visual reference to other social media streams.

Encourage the use of QR codes on the exhibition display stands for my own organisation, as well as visual reference to other social media streams.

Use QR codes on my own business cards.

Experiment with ‘pimping up’ my own QR codes.

There has been a great deal of discussion elsewhere on t’internet as to the disconnect between the exhibition and the conference in terms of what is being offered, what is being asked for, what is being sold and what is the ‘right’ thing to be doing. Whilst I am not in complete disagreement with this sentiment, I think it is worthwhile to add that whilst I saw plenty of examples of forward-thinking innovative practice downstairs in the exhibition, Curatr, Cofacio and Lightbox to name but a few, I also saw some old-school, discounted methods and practices being used upstairs in the conference; bullet-point riddled slides Powerpoint slides for starters!

So that is Learning Technologies over for another year, or is it just the start of lots more innovative, inspiring, challenging work for me within this……. I’ll let you know on Monday morning

I am typing this Blog from a hotel room in London where I am staying during my attendance at the Learning Technologies conference 2011; I tell you this because it is entirely relative to my Twitter history…..

I had heard of Twitter prior to attending LT10 but admit to having dismissed it as a celebrity ‘fad’, LT10 was the catalyst that I needed to pop my Twitter cherry!

So here I am 12 months later with over 2600 tweets under my belt, over 200 followers and following over 1oo other people. Everyone one of these people is in some way shape or form involved in L&D, Learning Technologies, Social Media or more usually all 3!

So if you haven’t yet set up a Twitter account then please don’t let this fantastic opportunity pass you by. If you don’t know how or where to start, then you could do a lot worse than checking out these resources which will help you on your way…

The programme is broken down into ‘Building Blocks’ with this weeks blocks centring around Analysis/Design & producing video content for rapid elearning programmes.

It was the video assignment that really got me thinking as I have ‘dabbled’ with producing video content in the past using my Flip camera and the Flipshare software that comes packaged with it, but have always wanted (needed) a reason to push myself beyond the rather simple content that it produces.

The assignment criteria for the assignment was:

Your video should include:

Someone speaking, either straight to camera or in an interview format

At least two shots

Sound

Titling

Think about what you want to communicate in the video

Think about the types of shots you want to use

Quickly storyboard the video by sketching out each shot

If you are shooting outside in the daytime you probably won’t need lights

If you are shooting inside use one or two powerful lights

Shoot your video and record the sound

Record multiple takes

Edit and title the video using a video editor – we recommend some below

Title the speaker(s) when they first appear

Use simple transitions between shots

Compress your video for web delivery

Upload the video to YouTube, call it ‘Your Name ReD Video Assignment’ and add a link to it on the Videos page on the Network. For a tutorial on how to do this view the How-To Guide: ‘The Network – Add video’ on the Main page

As a comment add:

A description of the video

The technologies and equipment you used

Any challenges you faced and how you overcame them and

What you would do differently if you attempted the same project again

I knew that I would struggle to achieve all of these requirements using the Flipshare software so I thought it might be worthwhile having a look inside Windows Live Movie Maker…

………… I wasn’t overly keen in doing this as previous versions of Movie Maker have been….. ‘disappointing’, however credit where credit is due, I was very, very pleased with the functionality of it.

Admittedly, I doubt that it will be the first piece of editing software that James Cameron will reach for when he undertakes his next blockbuster. But if you are looking for an intuitive, feature-rich and (if you own a Windows 7 PC) – free piece of editing software, then maybe you should take a look…

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding as they say, so here is my assignment submission. As always feedback is always welcome – at this point everybody becomes a George Lucas

As part of the website promotion unit. Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management (CWCCM) programme I am undertaking, I have been asked to create a plan for driving up web traffic for this blog site. This assignment forms part of the website promotion unit.

As part of my research I visited many sites, but found that most of them (Wikipedia included) tended to delve into complex explanations of the algorithms that were used to enable search engines to rank sites, I did however find this site that offered a simplistic overview, along with some clearly defined actions to take away and implement.

As my personal blog resides on a WordPress platfom, I also located this information relating to using the standard WordPress features to improve Search Engine Optimization as well as some additional plugins available for WordPress.

So what am I going to do with this information to better ‘market’ my blog?

Use the keywords that I anticipate people will be searching for, throughout my blog entry (although not in every sentence!)

If I ever change my WordPress theme, then I will ensure that I select a theme that allows my content to sit as close to the top of the page as most search engines only search the top 1/3 of a page before moving on.

Make better use of pingbacks, blogrolls and trackbacks. The more my blog is ‘connected’ then the more chance there is of it’s search engine rankings increasing.

Research and install a plugin that will allow me to add meta-tags to my site.

There’s quite a bit for me to be getting on with there, but hopefully it will be a worthwhile investment of time and effort.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-5-3/feed/0I’m absolutely loving…http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/im-absolutely-loving/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/im-absolutely-loving/#commentsSun, 16 Jan 2011 20:48:33 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=959… the structure of the online Rapid eLearning Design programme that I have been undertaking for the past week.

The ReD programme is the brain-child of @RobHubbard from LearningAge solutions who has cleverly set the premise of the programme around each of the delegates being ‘Junior Operatives’ in the fictitious Ministry of Instructional Design, but hey! Rob can do a much better job of explaining the premise in this video here.

As I’m only a week into it it is a little difficult to offer any in-depth feedback, however what already deserves recognition is the way in which the programme is structured. Rob has done a great job of blending:

Social Learning

Rapid eLearning

Immersive Learning Environments

Self-directed learning

Mind-maps

Online assessments

Peer-reviews

Webinars

and Blogs

and we’ve only just finished Week 1!

Whilst the above list may seem a hell of a lot to be participating in in a week, the real credit to the programme is the way in which it ‘just works’ from the learners perspective.

There were a few interactions within the induction game, that caused me to raise an eyebrow as the responses that the characters provided did not neccesarily fit with what I considered to be a holistic approach to elearning; this was echoed by other members in the Ning site that acts as the social-learning element of the programme (we are thinking that the responses were deliberate, in order to spark debate) – I’ll be checking this with Rob tomorrow during the Week 2 webinar.

There were 2 ‘assignments’ to undertake this week. One centred around the use of images in elearning (my submision is actually the header at the top of this Blog site!) and the other was around the use of audio in elearning. That submission can be heard below.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/im-absolutely-loving/feed/0Homework time… CWCCM Task 4.3http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-4-3/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-4-3/#commentsSun, 16 Jan 2011 16:02:13 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=954As part of the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management (CWCCM) programme I am undertaking, I have been asked to write a 500-word web article on a topic related to this unit (which included writing for the web, e-newsletter, surveys and podcasting) This article has been submitted to the CWCCM VLE, but I thought I’d share it with you here.

Podcasting? That phrase has come about as a result of the rise in popularity of the iPod, right?Well actually, No! That is however a popular misconception brought about, more than likely, as a result of the inclusion of ‘pod’ within both terms. The podcasting community generally accepts that the first person to use the term was Dannie Gregoire on September 15th 2004 who took the phrase ‘programming on demand’ and created the acronym ‘pod’ – hence podcast.

I’ve recorded some audio clips and placed them on my organisations intranet, am I podcasting?

Technically, No! A ‘true’ podcast is one which allows listeners to subsribe to it’s feed and subsequently receive updated podcasts from you, as and when you publish them. Just placing an audio clip on a webpage or emailing it to somebody, falls a little way short of a true podcast… BUT… you are doing more than a lot of people, so keep up the good work.

Surely you need a lot of technical equipment to Podcast, I mean just look at a radio studio.

You’d be surprised at how little equipment you need to podcast. In fact, services such as Audioboo and iPadio both offer Smartphone apps that allow you to record audio and then upload it onto their website, which then provides a feed that listeners can subsribe to… Voila! a podcast! For those of you without Smartphones, iPadio even offers a London based number that allows you to ‘dial’ into an audio recording system, which again publishes a feed. So you’ve got no excuse!

I like the idea of podcasting, but I doubt that anybody would want to hear what I have to say.

How do you know until you try? On of the most successful podcasts of all time was the Ricky Gervais podcast in which Ricky and Steve Merchant just engaged in conversation with their radio producer Karl Pilkington. Nobody ever expected it, but that unscripted, conversational, humorous dialogue has proven to be a killer formula. If you’ve got a subject that’s close enough to your heart that you feel passionately enough about it to talk into a phone or microphone for 5-10 minutes every week, then you have enough material for a podcast. Go for it, you never know!

I like the idea, but want to do a bit more research, where should I start?

A great starting point would be to pick up a copy of ‘Podcasting for Dummies’ which provides easily understood, humorous, technical advice for beginners onwards, whilst if you are searching for some good examples of podcasts (particularly if you are responsible for the education of others) then why not have a listen to some of James Clays podcasts.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/homework-time-cwccm-task-4-3/feed/0Guess who’s back, back again…http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/guess-whos-back-back-again/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/guess-whos-back-back-again/#commentsFri, 14 Jan 2011 23:56:18 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=945Craigy’s back, tell a friend (if you’re not an Eminem fan, then this blog title was wasted on you!)

As you will have spotted by now, I have been absent from my Blog for a couple of weeks, admittedly some of that absence has been down to the fact that I have been moving to this self-hosted WP site, which I am hoping will ‘futureproof’ some of the ideas that I want to take forward and also to be honest, it’s been Christmas and I’ve been a bit lazy!!!

But we’re half way through January so it’s about time I pulled my finger out and started putting fingers (both index ones only) to keyboard.

Here are a few of the blog entries I have got lined up over the next few weeks:

Overview of a storyboarding session that I have arranged to be delivered by Julie Wedgwood.

Reflections on my first use (as a facilitator) of Elluminate

My ‘alternative’ view to the Learning Technology Trends To Watch In 2011 post.

Reflections on my participation of a Virtual Classroom facilitators workshop facilitated by Onlignment.

A little look at something quite……. special, that I have discovered in YouTube.

Commentary on my progress through an online Rapid eLearning Development programme

If you haven’t already added this new web address to your subscriptions/aggregator, then make sure you do as I don’t want you to miss out!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/guess-whos-back-back-again/feed/0Unfortunately in my world…http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/unfortunately-in-my-world/
http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/unfortunately-in-my-world/#commentsWed, 12 Jan 2011 23:03:14 +0000http://tayloringit.com/?p=928…. a significant number of the technologies mentioned in the recent blog post ‘Tools to look out for in 2011‘ are already dead in the water; allow me explain why.

For those of you who know me, you’ll know that I am more than keen to try out both current and emerging technologies to see how they can enhance and enrich the learning experience not only for myself, but also the learners within my organisation.

My struggle over the past 12 months (again, this is ‘old’ news for those who know me) to utilise these technologies within my workplace has left with me something of a pessimistic and admittedly perhaps a defeatist attitude.

It is with a slightly ‘brow beaten’ resignation that I thought I would add my own little perspective on the fantastic blog post that was brought to my attention via a tweet from @ColinSteed

Unusually for me I am going to ‘lift’ the original blog post in its entirety, however the original post can be found here and very worthy of a read in its own right. My comments are shown inred italics.

Learning Technology Trends To Watch In 2011

Artificial as the year’s end might be, I can’t help but look back in amazement at the technology trends and changes we’ve seen and speculate about how we will learn and enable learning experiences in 2011.

Some of this year’s technology trends are based on disruptive innovation while others are based on changes in outlook and awareness. Here are my observations. Please add yours in the Comments section below. (see source website)

Growth of Social Learning

There are more than 550 million people on Facebook and 65 million daily tweets on Twitter. Opportunities for learning through social media technologies abound and should grow ever stronger in the coming years. As a growing number of people look outside their training departments to meet their professional learning needs via social media, new services will most likely emerge to meet the greater demand.

For example, learning professionals currently use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other services to share links and posts throughout the day and night. Online learning-related chats and discussions engage people from around the world, shrinking the geographical and cultural distances between us.

We’re bound to see new services that integrate across all of our devices to improve online collaboration, sharing and discussion, and ones that help people form smaller, more intimate digital and location-based communities.

To LMS or Not

This year proved to be one of great debate surrounding the future and necessity of the Learning Management System. Much of it boils down to whether employee learning should be controlled and tracked, particularly when much of workplace learning occurs through informal channels.

Although most organizations aren’t throwing away their expensive systems any time soon—particularly those in highly regulated industries—the debate does seem to have placed a crack in the armor.

At the very least, there seems to be a growing awareness among learning professionals that non-structured learning can be valuable, that alternative approaches to learning don’t require tracking and that social media technologies just might have a purpose in the workplace. As a result, some LMS platforms are transforming into a broader model, where structured learning is just one part of a larger learning community that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing, and social networking. - Unfortunately for most parties involved we ‘kind of’ have an LMS, I say unfortunately because it is a SAP based solution. For those of you who have experience of the SAP LMS, perhaps you would like to leave your own description of the system in the comments box at the bottom of this page for the uninitiated! Add into the equation that we have ‘chosen’ to switch self-service off and you kind of get the idea as to where we are with LMS.

Pocket Video Technology

The ubiquitous presence of video in our connected lives got a serious boost from super-portable pocket video technology this year. Started by the Flip and now with many impressive competitors, these small, convenient recorders produce HD video, enable easy uploading to YouTube and other sharing sites, and run for under $200 US.

More than ever before, amateur videographers are teaching, demonstrating and sharing their knowledge and expertise. With 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube, this service has become the second largest search engine in the world.

The demand for video is sure to bring about new online services that enhance how videos are integrated into our world for just-in-time, informal learning. According to Ravit Lichtenberg from Ustrategy.com, “In the coming year, gaps in our video experience will be filled with the integration of filtering, tagging, editing and locating tools into each and every video feed.” Sounds good to me. – Bit more of a success story here. During my recent internal move within my organisation I recorded some ‘talking head’ footage of myself describing some of the projects that my successor would be taking over, ‘loose ends’, along with a general overview of the L&D function. We have also linked some of our rapid elearning modules to a couple of YouTube videos. Unfortunately, I think the Innovation Prevention Department are onto my trail…. (so that’s probably the next site to be blocked then)

Mobile

Due to improved infrastructure, slick mobile operating systems and smartphone market penetration, we seemed to hit a tipping point of readiness for mobile content this year. From mini-courses to collaboration to performance support, mobile learning could go mainstream in the near future.

In terms of converting legacy courses, it will mean streamlining everything—paring down over-sized multimedia elements as well as implementing a ‘less is more’ philosophy. In terms of new development, designers will have to manage the limitations of a smaller screen and decreased memory capacity. When mobile learning hits critical mass, people of all ages and occupations will reap the benefits. – “there are incredibly strict controls over cameras in my organisation. – Whilst employees are allowed (at the moment) to carry their own personal phones with them, there is little chance of the forthcoming site-wide handset upgrade being to a handset that would lend itself to mobile learning. This is backed up by the Blackberries that are issued to certain people having their cameras disabled!

iPad or Alt-Tablets

Although you may resent the fact that Apple won’t support Flash (yet, that is), you have to admit that the iPad continues to push the world of interactive content. The combination of a gestural interface with fine aesthetics, convenience and portability appears to be a game changer. New interactive books and magazines as well as educational and social apps are breaking ground.

But even though the iPad has sold well in the consumer and academic markets, its ability to penetrate into the workforce remains to be seen. Other tablet makers plan to support Flash and considering that over 70 percent of today’s online video uses the Flash format, we may be more likely to see alternate tablet technologies invading the workplace in the future. Note: Adobe Flash CS5 can convert .swf files into HTML-5 for some level of compatibility with the iPad. - I quote -“we don’t support Apple products”, “if there is a camera in it (or going to be) then forget it”, ” we don’t (and will never) have Wi-Fi on site”

Virtual Worlds Rising Up

To find out about the latest learning trends in the virtual sphere, I contacted expert Karl Kapp, author of Learning in 3D and professor at Bloomsberg University. Dr. Kapp sees 3D Virtual Worlds headed in three directions in 2011.

“One, I see an increase in 3D Virtual World software being used to replace 2D PowerPoint-based virtual meetings. People loose focus quickly in 2D meetings staring at slides on the screen with a disembodied voice. So more companies are adopting 3D virtual worlds—where the environments look like conference rooms or offices—to avoid the mind numbing presentations. This is basically a replacement strategy of virtual worlds.

The second, and I think more interesting, is the use of 3D virtual worlds as enterprise-wide portals. In this trend, I see a 3D virtual world as a place of entry, when a person goes to work (virtually or drives somewhere and logs on). The person can then access social media tools, documents and other applications all from within the integrated 3D platform. This trend is fascinating in that 3D virtual worlds are creating an entirely new interface between employees and the systems they use at work.

The third trend is using 3D virtual worlds as multi-learner simulations. So instead of one person participating in a simulation, multiple people can participate and work together while learning the facts, knowledge and procedures required to collaborate. This is being used primarily with first responders and medical applications.” - “our network struggles as it is, never mind trying to engage in Virtual Worlds”

Augmented Reality

Gary Woodill, Ed.D., a Senior Research Analyst at Brandon Hall Research and author of The Mobile Learning Edge, was kind enough to contribute his perspective on the trends affecting Augmented Reality related to mobile learning.

According to Dr. Woodlill, “Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the most disruptive applications for mobile learners. It is an example of location-based services, where information is provided to you based on your location, and even the direction that your phone camera is facing. With that information, your smartphone can supply additional textual information about what you are looking at, or can blend computer generated objects with the video or still image on your screen.

AR can also supply clues and problems to you through your smartphone based on your location, allowing for both training applications and learning games while on the move. For example, there are AR applications that can add historical objects to the picture of your surroundings as you move through a town, giving you a richer sense of the historical significance of an area. Another AR application tells you the tenants of a building as you point your camera in its direction.

Because mobile learning is showing raid growth, and because Augmented Reality is one of its most compelling uses, look for rapid growth in the next five years in learning applications that use augmented reality concepts.” – ” we don’t (and probably never will) allow Smartphones/portable devices to be fully enabled amongst the entire workforce”

Blogs

According to Technorati, the blog count reached 70 million last year. Even though a quarter of them are most likely bot-created spam blogs, the quantity of content ‘in the cloud’ is still staggering. Blogs give everyone a voice to communicate, teach, spout opinions, learn and network. And with RSS technology, blog posts are quickly pushed to subscribers for easy access.

Although blogging has always had hints of social sharing, this is more evident than ever before. Jon Sobel, of Blog Critics notes that, “Bloggers’ use of and engagement with various social media tools is expanding, and the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks are disappearing. As the blogosphere converges with social media, sharing of blog posts is increasingly done through social networks.” With this much information available through so many forms, blogging should continue to prove a worthy medium for teaching, discussion and learning. - We don’t have any internal platform to host these Blogs, even our intranet is so functionality-free that it prevents us from doing so. Given the natural caution surrounding the nature of our Industry, any blogging platform would need to sit within our firewall, which would mean involving the Innovation Prevention Department……..

eBooks

The digital book publishing revolution is thriving as a result of improved electronic readers, the introduction of the iPad, the open ePub format, and a growing popularity of downloadable books in .pdf format sold by authors. With the advent of ‘always on’ devices, eBooks present one more path for learning and content distribution.

In the future, forward thinking training organizations will provide their print materials in downloadable formats for employees to study or reference as needed. And as more digital readers become Internet-ready, books will hyperlink to other sources of information, providing a richer reading experience.- Hmmmm, this looks promising, although Amazon’s ‘licensing’ surrounding their Kindle edition appears to make this a ‘non-starter’ for use as a shared resource i.e. amongst multiple users.

QR Codes

A QR Code is a type of barcode that can be read by QR scanners and mobile phones with cameras, using a QR reader app. Capable of holding text, data and URLs, QR codes have a greater capacity than the old fashioned 10-digit barcode because they’re two-dimensional. Okay, these weren’t a booming trend in 2010, but we’ll probably see more of them in the future.

Librarians and educators have found inventive uses for bar codes you might find inspiring. For example, QR codes containing a hyperlink have been placed on shelves in libraries. The code links to additional information about a related subject. In her blog, Instructional Design Fusions, Diane Rees writes about ways to use QR codes to explore stories in non-traditional locations to enhance educational activities. -“Erm…. dont QR codes need a camera to read them? (see various references to cameras above)

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2011/01/unfortunately-in-my-world/feed/4I’m guilty, but I am trying….http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/im-guilty-but-i-am-trying/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/im-guilty-but-i-am-trying/#commentsSun, 26 Dec 2010 10:30:23 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=791… to vanquish the ‘old-school’ information dumps and click-next type of elearning that are the bain of many of our lives.

I must admit that this critical insight into best practice Instructional Design has only come about since we moved to a self-authoring tool, meaning that some of my previous attempts have ‘ahem‘ been very….. traditional

I was still quite proud of my previous attempts as it was the first time that I had ever created such a piece of content, however the screencast below shows my very first piece of elearning concerning the use of Display Screen Equipment and highlights some of the retrospective ‘niggles’ that have grated on me since I started looking into ID in greater detail.

Having now researched ID in greater detail, I followed up the above module with Version 2 which can be seen in the screencast below. In the screencast I outline some of the changes that I have made since my original attempt.

The inspiration for this approach was provided my @tomkuhlmann and @catmoore. Tom for the idea of creating the ‘look and feel’ of the module in PowerPoint before importing it into our rapid elearning tool and Cathy for her ideas on ‘dumping the drone’ and her Action Mapping process.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/im-guilty-but-i-am-trying/feed/0I have another cap to wear…http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/i-have-another-cap-to-wear/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/i-have-another-cap-to-wear/#commentsFri, 17 Dec 2010 12:38:15 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=801… and that is of Social Media correspondent for Nuclear TV.

This is a ‘title‘, I hasten to add that I have not bestowed upon myself but as the nucleus of Nuclear TV sits within my immediate team (and I never stop harping on about the benefits of engaging with Social Media), I guess it was inevitable that I was going to end up with that role!

This interview was the first (of what I hope will be many) insights into how a highly-regulated, security-conscious sector such as the Nuclear Industry is engaging with Social Media, the challenges that it brings and the rewards that it can bestow.

I must admit to being slightly nervous about conducting this interview, not about appearing in front of a camera, but about speaking on a subject such as Social Media, when there are far more knowledgeable, influential people out there who are already commenting on Social Media far more eloquently that I could hope to do..

… what do you think?

… did I get it right?

… did I miss anything?

…would you have done things differently?

If you have any feedback, it would be great if you could provide it in the comments area below, as this will allow me to ensure that future commentaries really do reflect ‘current thinking’.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/i-have-another-cap-to-wear/feed/0Homework time… CWCCM Task 2.3http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/homework-time-cwccm-task-2-3/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/homework-time-cwccm-task-2-3/#commentsSat, 11 Dec 2010 18:04:32 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=778As part of the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management (CWCCM) programme I am undertaking, I have been asked to expand upon the following in relation to the Internet or intranet website on which I am working/intend to work.

The goals for website.

Describe the important characteristics of the target audience for this site.

Given that I am interested in developing both this blog and my organisations intranet pages, I have provided responses below for both areas:

My Blog

Goal

Having reviewed the stats for my Blog since I launched it in April 2010, the average views per day has been 10. It is my goal to increase that figure by 50% to an average view of 15 per day by August 2011.

Important Characteristics of Target Audience

My target audience for this Blog are Learning & Development professionals, with a slight bias towards those who are involved in using and promoting current and emerging technologies. I surmise that this group of people are looking for content which will provide them with an initial perspective on a subject or an innovative approach to undertaking an activity. I also suspect that they are looking for content that will showcase the tools that are available in an integrated manner. i.e. Twitter feeds, embedded media, tags etc

My Organisations Intranet site

Goal

The goal for this site is a little more difficult to define as I am not the ‘owner’ of the site, this is held by an individual within our overall Group. I am also unable to define simple, low-level goals such as ‘increase site/page traffic by ?% as there isn’t a hit counter/statistics functionality within the platform. Instead I have taken it upon myself to offer what advice and support I can to the intranet authors within my organisation by way of forming peer support groups, arranging formal training on the platform for new authors and creating an online library of screencast ‘how to’s‘ as a performance support tool. I am also investigating the possibility of the CWCCM programme (or similar) being delivered as a closed programme to my target audience.

Important Characteristics of Target Audience

The target audience for this intranet site are employees within my organisation who work on my geographical site. They are aged between 17 up to statutory retirement age and have varied levels of IT competency.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/homework-time-cwccm-task-2-3/feed/0European Health & Saf..Zzzzzzzzzzzzhttp://tayloringit.com/2010/12/european-health-saf-zzzzzzzzzzzz/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/european-health-saf-zzzzzzzzzzzz/#commentsFri, 10 Dec 2010 09:00:06 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=759….Don’t fall asleep on me; for a change this is going to be something H&S related that was fun, engaging and memorable. (you heard it here first folks)

My organisation is understandably H&S focussed and always strives to support initiatives such as the recent European Health & Safety week, despite maintaining a keen focus on H&S, regardless of any external initiative. However this year my boss suggested to our Compliance Department that perhaps we should do something ‘different’, alongside the more traditional email/intranet/poster etc campaigns in relation to the importance of maintaining equipment.

This is what he came up with…

Whilst the video clip doesn’t show it too well, each of the tricks had an underlying safety related theme such as:

Not undertaking tasks you aren’t trained to do (a cash in an envelope trick)

Checking equipment thoroughly (using a piece of PPE that went from being serviceable to unserviceable… whilst an audience member was wearing it! along with the guillotine trick that you can see in this clip)

The feedback from the multiple shows that took place around site (to fit in with working patterns/geography) was very positive with comments such as

“refreshing” “memorable” “fun“

being in great abundance with the most obvious sign of approval being that people were arriving ahead of the performance times and were even phoning us to ask why the magician hadn’t been yet….. can you honestly say that your learners have ever had that response to a Health & Safety event?

This whole approach fits in with a ‘one liner’ that @larshyland mentioned at the last eLN event “think campaign, not course”

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/european-health-saf-zzzzzzzzzzzz/feed/0How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog…http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/how-to-create-killer-content-for-your-blog/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/how-to-create-killer-content-for-your-blog/#commentsSun, 05 Dec 2010 18:28:38 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=728… is the name of the online programme that I commence tomorrow.

I am currently undertaking the Web Content Creation & Management programme, so was a little uncertain as to whether I had the time to commit to another concurrent piece of CPD which took place over 5 concurrent days , however when I noticed that the lessons will remain active for 12 months, I was a little less concerned over my ability to juggle several online programmes.

What has really attracted me to this online programme is the professional curiosity as to whether an ‘intense’, 5 day, mostly asynchronous (there is a webinar) programme can actually work. If it does and I can replicate their approach for subjects within my organisation then I believe that both communications and learning activities within my organisation can greatly benefit.

I’ll let you know how I get on..

In the meantime, how about you? Does your organisation use such an approach, if so for what subjects and how successful has it been?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/how-to-create-killer-content-for-your-blog/feed/0Homework time… CWCCM Task 1.3http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/homework-time-cwccm-task-1-3/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/12/homework-time-cwccm-task-1-3/#commentsSun, 05 Dec 2010 11:17:41 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=719As part of the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management (CWCCM) programme I am undertaking I have been asked to gather information about the Internet or intranet website on which I am working/intend to work. The following questions have been posed…

What is the site?

This Blog is one of the 2 sites that I am planning to apply my newly found knowledge from the CWCCM programme to. The other is my organisations intranet site.

2. Who will be responsible for creating content for the site?

As this is my personal Blog I am solely responsible for the content, however in terms of the intranet site, there are a number of departmental authors who are responsible for creating content. I am responsible for the initial and continual development of those authors, so I hope to cascade the learnings from this programme onto them.

3. How will the content be created?

Some of the content on my Blog will be created by others and embedded into my site such as YouTube videos and Slideshares, however some it will be self-created such as videos, images and podcasts. The intranet site will consist mostly of ‘in-house’ media but is unlikely to be anything more complex than some photos. This is likely to be for 2 reasons;

The skillset of the authors

The poor functionality of the platform itself.

4. How will the content be stored?

Some of my Blog content will be hosted by the wordpress.com service whilst some of it will be stored on another platform and embedded into the Blog (i.e. YouTube & Slideshare). The intranet sites content will all be hosted on our own servers behind our firewall.

5. Where and how will the website be hosted?

My Blog is hosted by the wordpress.com site, however I have been considering moving that to a self-hosted wordpress service due to additional plug-ins and functionality that it can offer. Due to the nature of my Industry our intranet site is hosted on internal servers behind a very powerful firewall.

…Was how I kicked off a CPD session yesterday afternoon for a small number of our internal elearning authors.

One of the attendees had already undertaken training on our rapid elearning tool, however the remainder had not yet received any training so I took the opportunity to stress to them that elearning was a broad, deep subject and that they should not just think of it as sitting in front of a PC, undertaking self paced elearning but should also take into consideration:

Videos

Podcasts

Info-screens

Screencasts

Our intranet

(amongst others)

As way of proving the simplicity of using video, I asked them to participate in a simple ice-breaker exercise by videoing each other on a Flip camera answering the question

“why have I come to this session”

I then created a short video and uploaded it to YouTube, again to show the speed & simplicity of using this type of tech. Here is their video (quirky camera angle and all!)

I then went on to use one of our new Interactive White Boards (IWB) to facilitate Cathy Moores Action Mapping process. For 1/2 of the attendees this was the first time they had used an IWB (2 birds with 1 stone!). Within the first few slides I presented them with the 2 x Wordle outputs from @StephanieDedhars session at the recent eLN event. You can read more about Stephanies session and use of Wordle in her blog.

I then provided them with 30 minutes or so to undertake an individual desktop Action Mapping exercise in relation to their anticipated piece of elearning. This work was interspersed with some brief ‘sanity checks’ in order to peer review each other progress.

To finish off with, we all participated in a podcast (my first podcast may I add) which centred around discussing the session we had just participated in. The podcast can be listened to here.

The next step in this process will be to undertake the training on the system itself, swiftly followed by a session on storyboarding which will be facilitated by Julie Wedgwood… stay tuned…

I’d had really been looking forward to this particular event as my organisation is heavily regulated and delivers a great deal of compliance training; to that end I was really keen to discover how other organisations and Instructional Designers have gone about dealing with the dry, uninspiring beast that is Compliance Training. I was so excited about the potential of the event that I invited my organisations Health & Safety Manager along, which he duly accepted… now the event had to deliver….

The day kicked as usual with @RobHubbard welcoming everybody and we were swiftly into the 1st session…

Creating a successful compliance culture – Viv Cole

This was a great intro session for many reasons, not least of which was that it was a group discussion exercise (so it got us all talking, first thing in the morning) on the subject of our thoughts and opinions on a compliance culture/training. Our particular table recognised the need for a lot of the Compliance Training that goes on, however a consistent thread of discussion was the fact that a lot of organisations adopt a ‘carpet bombing’ approach to compliance training. There was even an example of a financial sector organisation forcing there groundsmen to undertake basic FSA training; talk about ‘LARGE hand, small map’! I was pleased to explain that in my organisation there are only 2 x events that every employee has to undertake:

Fire Safety

Display Screen Equipment Awareness

and that we have adopted an Assess-Train-Assess approach to many of the other compliance events that we deliver, meaning that an individuals competence (or lack of) is the driver for refresher training as opposed to a refresher period expiring. This was something that I had hoped to deliver a Pecha Kucha on at today’s event, but circumstances unfortunately prevented me from doing so.

Viv then went on to share a list with us of the crucial ingredients to a successful compliance that had been created during a round table event with a number of compliance managers earlier this year list:

I had been looking forward to Stephanie’s session in particular, as we had been tweeting in the run-up to the event and I was really intrigued as to how she was going to incorporate the Wordle that she had been requesting words from via Twitter.

What she did, which I thought was a really clever idea (and one that I intend to steal in the near future) was to use the responses from eLN members as a TNA tool to determine the content of her session, and here she is in full swing…

Stephanie extolled a 3 stage principle of:

Making the learners care

Showing them that it matters

Helping them to live it

Like any good speaker, she inspired me to look into a few of her ideas in greater detail/implement a few actions on my return to work; they were:

Review this YouTube video on typography

Ask our Compliance department to provide facts and figures on fire-related incidents and Display Screen Equipment related injuries. This data would be broadcast over our info-screens to (hopefully) make the learners ‘care’.

Review Stephanie’s award-winning piece of compliance elearning (Stephanie has subsequently informed me that she is no longer able to provide access to the content itself, but has directed me here)

Laura Overton – How the recession has impacted elearning

Laura Overton then took to the mic, to launch the Towards Maturity Learning Technology Benchmark 2010. Given that these were the results of an in-depth survey, there was a lot of data which would not be done justice by my Blog, so why don’t you mosey on down to the the Towards Maturity website and have a look at the report yourself? What really surprised me was that the use of Virtual Classrooms was reported as dropping compared to the previous benchmark??? How come? Surely in the ‘greener’, more cost-focussed world are living in, the uptake of tools such as this would be on the increase? Maybe @barrysampson’s tweet hit the nail on the head?

My action planning point from this session is actually a carry-over from a conversation with Laura at WOLCE and that is to:

Take part in a Beta test of the 24/7 online tool that Towards Maturity are developing.

Clive Shepherd – Competency or Compliance?

@cliveshepherd started off by regaling a tale of some time that he had spent in Uganda (which has been, and still is still considered as a risk-area) which had been preceded by a piece of understandably necessary elearning. The point that Clive was making was that the moment he was told it was MANDATORY, he became turned off to it.

To use Clive’s own words “we are the keepers of our brains, if we put ourselves of the learning itself then there is little if any chance of it happening“. This struck a real chord with me as my organisation does make many pieces of learning MANDATORY, now given that a significant % of our learning activities are H&S related, then perhaps this is inescapable, but for me there was a tie-in to what Stephanie had said about making the learner ‘care‘ about undertaking the learner.

Clive mentioned the great Blog post by @shackletonjones on the Affective Context Model. I’ve seen/read this blog post a few times and I get something different from it each time; it’s definitely worth a view, or 2, or 3….

Action planning points from this?

Review the Affective Context model blog (again)

Consider a coloured hue with a photo to reinforce the context of the image (I spotted Clive has done this with a couple of images taken of him sitting at his PC)

Holborn Bars once again came up trumps with the lunch and we were back in for the Pecha Kucha 2010 final between Phil Green, Tony Frascina and Matt Brewer with Matt Brewer walking away with a Kindle for his efforts, which I hope he will be donating to his daughter, given her efforts in producing the images for his Pecha Kucha

Peter took us on something of a whirlwind tour of good and bad elearning design. He reminded us how easy it was to write bad multiple choice questions and how quickly you could fall into the trap of just designing ‘click next’ type elearning – in fact he showed us an example where the learner had to undertake 41 (no that isn’t a typo) consecutive mouse clicks to progress!!!

Peter referenced @CatMoores work a number of times, in particular her ‘Dump the Drone’ blog post

What really struck home for me though was his statement “good learning is good learning, regardless of the ‘e'” – and I do believe he’s right!

It was during the ensuing comfort break, that I had a quick chat with @larshyland who came up with a great phrase “think campaign, not course“. Great point Lars, and with my organisation now having a graphic designer and TV film/production crew, this is something that I will look to leverage in the future.

What am I planning to do with this sessions content?

Critically review the multiple choice assessments within the elearning I have produced

Donald Clarke – Compliance or Compliant?

Last up before the mad-dash for the tube was Donald Clarke who opened up by saying that he had no issues with the H&S related compliance training that took place, but it was the ‘Equality and Diversity’ type compliance training that he took issue with. Donald referenced several pieces of US research that disproved any benefit from undertaking such learning activities and came out with a fantastic soundbite

“The plural of anecdote is……. ‘not data'”

He also described the simple social media policy that the Channel 4 head implemented which went a little something like “Don’t be a dick!” – he then compared this to the tomes of rules that the BBC had produced, interestingly my organisation is considering implementing a Social Media, I wonder which approach model they will use

As previously mentioned I had taken my H&S Manager with me and I was really encouraged by his positive comments throughout the day and the vision and ideas that he had already started to formulate for the future.

There wasn’t much Tweeting going on throughout the day (which always surprises me, given the nature of these events), but for those of you who are interested here is the TweetDoc.

As always, the informal conversations that took place during the day were just as valuable as the formal sessions so I would like to thank everybody who contributed to an excellent day in whatever way. – Cheers!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/oxymoron-alert-innovation-in-compliance-training/feed/3Bringing elearning back ‘in’househttp://tayloringit.com/2010/11/bringing-elearning-back-inhouse/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/bringing-elearning-back-inhouse/#commentsSat, 20 Nov 2010 12:58:07 +0000https://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=624During the early part of 2009 my organisation made the decision to bring its ‘self-paced’ elearning back ‘in house’ after a number of years of outsourcing.

The interview below was conducted earlier this month to celebrate 12 months of the system being ‘live’.

The interview was then broadcast over the info-screen system that we have around our site in order to celebrate the efforts of everybody involved, to maintain the profile of elearning and to provide a glimpse of what the future may have in store for us…

During the interview I mention some research that I have done into the use of Learning Technologies within schools, HE & FE, a real eye-opener for me was when I attended @jamesclays Mobile Learning Bootcamp.

It is my intention to give a little more detail over some of the modules we have created in forthcoming blog posts.

The day started off with the workshop being welcomed by Andrew Quarmby from RSC (NW) via Skype, which was a nice touch as it demonstrated the ‘instant’ nature of video calling, whilst retaining the ‘humanity’ of a face-to-face environment.

We were then cautioned over being blinded by any shiny technology, but to always bear in mind whether it added value to what we trying to achieve. A walk-through – talk-through of Skype was provided for those attendees who were not Skype users demonstrating

Video calls

Recording Skype calls. (Pamela, Call graph, etc)

Exchanging files

Sharing desktop

… and for those of us that were using Skype, John Dalziel informed us that the latest beta version of Skype allows for up to 10 concurrent video calls to be made. (of personal use to me, as it will allow me to contact 3 x sets of Grandparents when my 2 1/2 year old is in a rare ‘good mood’).

John also directed us towards a resource that highlighted the environmental benefit of using technology to replace face-to-face events.

After a short break we had a look at ‘Interactive Training & Online Assessment’, with Nicola Harper from KAPLAN Financial providing us with an overview as to how they had used WebEx to facilitate synchronous online learning events to a widely dispersed audience.

What was interesting to hear from Nicola was that WebEx licences can be increased or decreased depending on the perceived need and that any chat-room sessions can be archived and displayed.

S&B Automotive Academy were next up with, what I thought was an exactly cracking example of using ‘live’ webcams

to assess vehicle maintenance apprentices undertaking an assessment whilst providing evidence. The clip below, shows a live stream from a garage servicing bay, the quality, panning and zooming functionality was truly superb.

A – During any assessment, the mentor is present to provide any feedback/confirmation etc that the video stream itself cannot validate.

Q - What do External Verifiers (EVs) think of this approach?

A – EVs love the system as the quality of evidence is observable.

Q – How much?

A – £500-600 (although, I can’t quite remember what you got for this) –

I’m not sure as whether there would be any call for this on my site, as it is quite a small site and most of the work that takes place could not be streamed outside of our Firewall, however there could be applications for this to swap working practices amongst our other sites around the world.

RSC (NW) provided a great USB key with an eXe resource on it, to provide further examples and research into the use of video.

All in all, it was a great day. Many, many thanks to all of those who contributed to its success (both in person and ‘virtually’) and I’m already looking forward to the next workshop.

Keep up the great work RSC (NW)!

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/video-enhanced-the-radio-star/feed/0Training is about telling people what they should and should not do…http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/training-is-about-telling-people-what-they-should-and-should-not-do/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/training-is-about-telling-people-what-they-should-and-should-not-do/#commentsSun, 07 Nov 2010 22:11:25 +0000https://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=529…. now before you all set up a car-share and drive up to Cheshire with pitch-forks and burning torches baying for my blood,

I must stress that the title of this blog post does not reflect my own thoughts. Allow me to explain…

I work in a highly regulated Industry which is not only regulated by several Industry specific bodies, but like everybody else, by the Health & Safety Executive.

Given the extremely high importance which we apply to safety, we have a Compliance Department which contains a number of H&S Advisers, who interpret the various rules, regulations and red tape and then provide guidance and direction to the organisation on how to meet those rules and regulations.

Over the past few years I have on occasions found myself at odds with some of these advisers over the fact that best-practice L&D thinking/practice doesn’t always fit with HSE ‘training delivery‘.

So it was not without some self-interest that I brought the forthcoming eLearningNetwork event, Innovation in Compliance Training to the HSE’s attention via their Twitter account. It was my hope that they would attend the event and gain a flavour as to how L&D professionals were attempting to enhance competence and not just ‘tick boxes’. Whilst also allowing people such as myself an insight in what exactly the HSE require; is it a box ticked to cover a backside, is it an intervention that has a real chance of being transferred back into the workplace, or is it both? I really wanted to hear what they wanted and not how their wishes were interpreted by workplace providers.

At the time of writing this post I have not received any indication as to whether they intend to attend or not, but what they did send me was this document (isn’t that kind of them).

Like I said training is about telling people what they should and should not do……

Now I know why I have been having such an uphill struggle

﻿﻿

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/training-is-about-telling-people-what-they-should-and-should-not-do/feed/2Once bitten…http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/once-bitten/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/once-bitten/#commentsFri, 05 Nov 2010 22:30:04 +0000https://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=507I’ve spent the last few nights putting together a few slides to underpin my session ‘Getting started with Learning Technologies’ at the Learning Technologies Conference 2011.

I was the using approach cited by Cliff Atkinson in his book Beyond Bullet Points, to develop a slide deck that uses full screen images to graphically underpin my story.

Whilst the sourcing of appropriate quality images took some time to locate, it took nowhere near as long as setting up the Auto-Tweet function which would allow me to autotweet during my session. So you can imagine the language in my office when I discovered that this presentation had ‘disappeared’ from my USB stick – and for those of you are thinking

“what’s the problem Craig, surely you had backed it up on your laptop or on Google Docs”

Erm… (embarrassed silence)… no I didn’t.

Like I say, once bitten…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/once-bitten/feed/0Now I wasn't expecting that!!http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/now-i-wasnt-expecting-that/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/now-i-wasnt-expecting-that/#commentsMon, 01 Nov 2010 08:50:39 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=467Many of you will know that I didn’t really take my first formal foray into Learning Technologies until 10 months ago at the Learning Technologies conference. Since then I have taken what I consider to be an active role in pursuing current and emerging technologies and using them as part of my own Personal Learning Network to (if I may say so myself) some success.

Over the past 10 months I have become an active Twitter user which has led me to connect with some wonderful people, allowed me to attend some great workshops and has allowed me to work with some great organisations. I have created my own Blog and am truly benefiting from the reflection that this provides me, I have set up my own Delicious, Flickr, Slideshare and YouTube accounts. I have also started to introduce the concept of Social Media and Learning Technologies to my organisation. But I had never for a moment, not one moment expected that my lowly activities would warrant anybodys attention.

How wrong I was…

.. During the summer I was speaking with the wonderful @juliewedgwood who suggested that the story of my ‘first 12 months with Learning Technologies’ might be a story that others would be interested in, that might convince others that you don’t have to have lengthy experience in this field to implement these tools and start to benefit from them and suggested that I speak to @DonaldHTaylor on the subject.

And so it came to pass that 2 emails, 1 face-to-face meeting and a phone call later and I am really chuffed (and proud) to announce that I have been asked to speak at the Learning Technologies Conference 2011 on the subject of ‘Getting started with learning technologies‘

If you’d like to find out how a real novice has gone about using these technologies then why not register to attend the Learning Technologies Conference 2011?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/11/now-i-wasnt-expecting-that/feed/3QR codes? sounds like something out of a Bond film!http://tayloringit.com/2010/10/qr-codes-sounds-like-something-out-of-a-bond-film/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/10/qr-codes-sounds-like-something-out-of-a-bond-film/#commentsFri, 29 Oct 2010 19:30:40 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=485I’ve been aware of QR codes for some time now after reading one of many blog posts on the subject from @jamesclay, but I had never really seen the benefits to them for learners in my organisation (or maybe that should read that I had never applied myself to researching the benefits!)

Blog posts from @jamesclay and @hopkinsdavid have provided me with some great ideas as to how QR codes could benefit learners. Admittedly I may be held back a little due to certain restrictions on the use/carriage of mobile phones on my site, with the primary phone being a very attractive brick

However, for those people who do own Smart phones we have started to use QR codes in our Learning Centre and here is a short video to prove it…

I have been aware for some time now as to the benefits of social bookmarking and in particular the Web 2.0 tool, Delicious.

Regular readers will know that during a recent un-conference for a group of my organisations Learning Facilitators, I introduced them to Delicious and encouraged them to use the tool to provide their learners with an opportunity to continue their learning journey beyond the confines of their formal learning event.

And then I thought “Hang On….”

… Whilst I use Delicious as part of my Personal Learning Environment, I don’t actually use it as part of the learning design for my own events!!!! I was in grave danger of failing to lead by example… something had to be done!

Fortunately for me, I was in the closing stages of designing a self-paced elearning module on the subject of Display Screen Equipment (DSE) Awareness, so with very little hassle I was able to embed a link to my Delicious account which contained some links to external DSE related websites.

I then asked a number of our Learning Facilitators to PILOT the module for me; as this is where things got interesting…

“I like the idea of the link to Delicious, but could this ‘link’ be set up on site anyway as some form of ‘general library’ of useful literature (could potentially be quite useful)”

Now whilst I think this is a great idea (and indeed I have already set this joint-account up), what had more of an impact on me was that one of our Learning Facilitators was not only able to see the benefit of linking the elearning to some Delicious bookmarks, but took the idea to a whole new level by suggesting a shared Delicious account amongst all Learning Facilitators.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Social Media has arrived in my organisation

Why not bookmark our Delicious account and see if our Learning Facilitators can be of benefit to you?

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/10/hmmmm-this-is-delicious/feed/2Learning Beyond the Course (eLN event)http://tayloringit.com/2010/09/learning-beyond-the-course-eln-event/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/09/learning-beyond-the-course-eln-event/#commentsThu, 23 Sep 2010 22:05:53 +0000https://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=439Once again I have been lucky enough to attend a fantastic CPD event in the shape of todays eLN event – Learning Beyond the Course.

@RobHubbard was our compère for the day, decked out as usual in a gloriously flowery shirt

(where do you get them from Rob?)

In line with my previous Blog post ‘Small Chunks‘ I was committed to taking away 1 Action Planning point per session that I could actually do something with back in my organisation.

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do with a paper clip, a stick, some constraint and a carrot then you’ll be gutted that you missed Ben’s session. But ‘cos he’s a good bloke he’s blogged about it in some detail here.

Which leads me to my action planning point(s)

Try and sweet-talk Ben into sending me the game that he kicked his session off with (very clever and innovative)

Read Daniel Pink’s Drive (Ben referenced this several times and as we have it sat in our library it makes sense to have a look)

I’ll be the first to admit that the title of this session was more than a little off-putting when I read about this event on the eLN website, but once I realised that we were going to be ‘virtually’ running around a Type 22 RN frigate, putting out fires and catching saboteurs I was hooked! It was certainly enlightening to hear that Caspian Learning have been creating some realistic virtual environments for some VERY security-conscious clients…. interesting…

Log into Thinking Worlds and request a demo

Invite Graeme into my organisation to demo Thinking Worlds.

Ed Stonestreet – Not eLearning

Ed reminded us that the elearning industry is worth $10bn and is almost without exception dull, dry and academic. As I work within a highly-regulated Industry I could certainly relate to Ed’s point that it is focussed on those who have a mandate to learn, those who need to tick a box. Apparently only 20% of any audience is motivated and inspired to act, the other 80% may have a latent interest but they need to be engaged, entertained and wowed in order to get them to participate. How can this be done….? Well Ed went on to explain in not so many words the Affective Context model, which I aren’t going to attempt to explain here, instead I’ll direct you towards Nick Shackleton-Jones blog.

Ed made such a good job of raising the issue of ‘engagement’ and ‘interest raising’ that I am going to direct our internal Learning Facilitators towards the Affective Context model video.

Rob had promised us an excellent lunch and Holborn Bars certainly didn’t disappoint!!!

Following lunch we had 3 great Pecha Kucha presentations, I’ve come to realise that these appear to be a staple element of an eLN event and I look forward to seeing them; who knows I may even present one at the November event (if anybody from the eLN board is reading this, that wasn’t a formal commitment!)

Jane Hart – Transforming Workplace Learning with Social Media

Jane Hart – Transforming Workplace Learning with Social Media

It was great to see Jane Hart again after lunch as the last time we met was at a Twitter workshop that she ran back in the Spring at the Informatology conference. Jane (as always) did a great job of proving the power of Twitter as a crowd-sourcing tool by calling upon her Twitter followers to respond to various questions that she was ‘auto-tweeting’ during her presentation. I was quite surprised to discover how few people in the immediate audience were Twitter users, although this is a pattern that I have noticed emerging at the IITT conference and the eLN showcase…. I wonder why….?

Patrick addressed an issue that I have been working on for sometime in my organisation which is “how can my learners progress through a piece of elearning’ without a next button on the screen. He had some great examples of using visuals to act as menu screens, which mirrors an approach I have taken with a Display Screen Equipment awareness package. This visual approach seemed to split the audience into 2 groups; those that ‘got it’ and those that thought that introducing a ‘fun’, visual component was a distraction and on some occasions set a false impression of how dull, boring and repetitive working life can be

Patrick made a great reference to the level of elearning interaction over the years:

Yesterdays elearning = dictation

Todays elearning = investigation

Tomorrows elearning = exploration (hopefully!)

So what were my action planning points?

Continue the work I am doing on removing the next button from my elearning module and then…

publicise this to the remaining elearning authors to show them that it ‘is’ possible.

Throughout the day the entire conference had taken the form of a crossword/wordsearch/game of battleships which I thought was really innovative and brought an interesting element to the event, my only concern with taking this approach was that I (and perhaps my learners) would be so distracted by the gaming element that the learning could suffer… not something I’m instantly dismissing though, and as with the rest of the day has provided food for thought….

For those of you who follow the ‘Saw’ series of movies then you will relate to the chilling title of this Blog post and image above, for those of you who haven’t followed the movies erm…. this has fallen flat on it’s face!!!

This coming Friday will see me attend the @eLearningnetwk event ‘Learning Beyond the Course’. The premise behind the event is that the conference itself will be a ‘game’. Game-based learning is something I’m looking forward to learning more about, I personally haven’t had any experience of this (although maybe I have, but have never realised it?) so am very keen to identify whether this is something that I could introduce into my organisations learning toolkit.

I’ll let you know how I get on…

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/09/i-want-to-play-a-game/feed/0LF ‘un’conference 16/09/10http://tayloringit.com/2010/09/lf-unconference-160910/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/09/lf-unconference-160910/#commentsFri, 17 Sep 2010 12:43:50 +0000http://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=375As mentioned in a previous Blog post I have been dabbling with the idea of arranging an unconference for a number of internal Learning Facilitators on the subject of ‘Using Technology to Enhance Learning’. Well after months of planning (read flapping!) it finally happened, want to find out what happened?…. read on…

I decided right from the outset to showcase the various technologies and platforms that are available to enhance learning activities, so what better place to start than creating a digital set of Joining Instructions as opposed to our traditional paper-based options, feedback to this approach was encouraging and I am hoping that this will generate some interest from the Learning Facilitators that attended.

The day itself kicked off with everybody arriving between 0800-0830hrs, they were greeted by a Captain Caveman poster (thanks Sam ;-)) which invited them to park any ‘negative’ thoughts that they had about using technology to enhance learning before the unconference started.

It was interesting to read everybodys views and in particular to gain an insight into some of the concerns of people for whom using these technologies is ‘new ground’ – all in all a very simple exercise, but an extremely valuable one.

The unconference kicked off with a keynote address from Alison Hattersley from The Success Factory on the subject of the ‘New World‘ using a piece of tech that everybody seemed impressed with which was PaperShow.

There were a number of great soundbites from this keynote but what really struck home for me was the statement “if you always do what you’ve always done, you WONT EVEN get what you’ve always got” – the justification behind this twist on a well-known phrase, is that due to the pace of change in the ‘New World’, doing business as usual means that you will just get left behind………

There were some (in my opinion) strong challenges to the use of technology during this keynote that I feel led us down a path that we didn’t really need to go down i.e. arguing that emails are bad because they distract you from your work… aren’t emails in themselves work? And if they aren’t then ignore them… anyways we were soon back on track and the floor was handed over to little old me!

I conducted a number of small icebreakers designed to not only allow attendees to introduce themselves but also to get some hands on with Learning Technologies straight away. Everybody participated in creating an iPadio podcast (which I subsequently lost, due to my mobile phone losing the signal during upload – (note to self: use the traditional ‘dial-up’ method next time!!!) Everybody then got the opportunity to look at some everyday and some not-so everyday items of hardware that could be used for learning activities; they were then asked to describe how that particular item could be used to enhance the delivery of learning events within their specific subject areas, this is what they had to say.

What was really encouraging from my perspective were the ideas that were being generated, I can only hope that the Learning Facilitators get the opportunity to put them into practice.

We then moved on to the subject of Twitter, which I know was of specific interest to many of the facilitators present. As this was an unconference and I was committed to taking a social constructionist approach to the day, I broke the attendees into 2 x groups and allowed them approx 20-30 minutes of online Twitter research time prior asking them to present their findings back to the group.

I particularly like this approach to facilitating as I know that the content is readily available and it places the onus on the delegates to ‘pull’ the information as opposed to me ‘pushing’ it onto them. Once again they didn’t disappoint and came up with some great research covering the history, learning uses, marketing uses, communities of practice and even url shortening services. I wish I had learnt as much about Twitter as quickly as they did!

Pretty soon they were Twittering amongst each other and a few even found the time to follow individuals and organisation from within their professional circles of interest – well done folks. Here is a summary of the Tweets that used the #lfcpd hashtag.

Lunchtime was fast approaching and believe me if there is oen thing that you do NOT want to miss whilst at The Success Factory, it’s the lunch so I asked my friend and work colleague Geoff to facilitate a session on the use of voting handsets. As expected Geoff took to this with this usual passionate style and within only 30 minutes had provided us with an insight into the architecture, setting up, settings and end-user experience of the TurningPoint Technology voting system.

This system saw widespread use across my organisation several years ago, however its use has become sporadic so I have always hoped that its use could become more widespread. Judging by the interest shown during Geoff’s session and subsequently via Twitter I fully expect to see an upsurge in its use once again.

One of the delegates, Jim, asked a great question as to how to create well crafted, robust questions to use within surveys and polls such as those that can be created using the TurningPoint tool. I knew that I had access to such a resource but couldn’t for the life of remember where, well Jim (and anybody else who’s interested) here it is. It’s technically for the SurveyMonkey toll that we hold an account for, but the overarching principles of good survey design remain the same.

Following a cracking lunch and an AWESOME Eton Mess,

it was time to get online again.

Prior to the unconference a number of Learning Facilitators had expressed a keen interest in discovering more about Virtual Classrooms so I had arranged for @philipgreen from Onlignment to facilitate a virtual classroom using Elluminate! Unfortunately Phil has been ill recently (get well soon) but he had kindly arranged for Elluminate themselves to facilitate a session for us.﻿ An archive of that session can be viewed here.

Judging by the verbal and written feedback that people provided following this demo it was quite clear that most people saw the benefits of this tool not only for delivering synchronous learning events but for improved business-wide communications. My plan is to ask Phil to deliver the planned session again once he is back on his feet as I believe it will allow us to see the full functionality of the tool from a ‘learners’ perspective – looking forward to that

From that point on things started to go a bit wrong!

I had embedded a number of YouTube videos into my slides using PPT 2010. For some reason best known to Microsoft this set my slidedeck into a perpetual loop, preventing me from exiting the YouTube clip. I was only able to exit this by closing the entire presentation down, opening it up again and then starting the presentation from the ‘next’ slide – very time-consuming and frustrating!!

The WiFi connection was lost to all PCs, given that we were just about to look at the Delicious bookmarking tool, this really couldn’t have happened at a worse time, but fortunately the venue very kindly allowed us to utilise their secure connection…. it did nothing for my blood pressure though!

We then undertook a bookmarking exercise in which we demonstrated the restricted nature of conventional website bookmarking (i.e. on your PC) and the benefits of using social bookmarking tools. Many of the attendees responded positively to this change in practice and identified the benefits of social bookmarking such as knowledge-sharing, collaborative working and helping learners to ‘pull’ information as well as the challenges that it may bring in terms of quality-checking the bookmarks provided. My most recent Delicious Bookmarks can be seen at the right hand side of this screen or alternatively my Delicious site is here.

We rounded the day off with a brief introduction to the concept of Virtual Learning Environments which included a whistle-stop tour of some Moodle platforms I have been working in.

Whilst I didn’t have sufficient time to cover its functionality in full, I was encouraged to hear some very positive comments from the group one stating that a VLE would enhance the effectiveness of learning delivering learning events to shift workers and another comment from an attendee who had operated in a VLE that sounded like it had only got as far as Stage 1, but who was impressed by the level of interactivity that I had been able to introduce into my sandpit VLE – I was well chuffed

The day closed with a prize draw for a Flip Ultra camera, the lucky recipient being…….. (you know who you are!) and no I’m not responding to the cries for a “recount”

So that was the day over; I’d like to say a BIG thank you to body who attended, to Alison, Martin and Vicky from the SuccessFactory, Neil Fagan for his support, Sam Pennington for Captaaaaaain CaaaaaaveMaaaaaan, Phil Green for all his help, Elluminate for their demo session and for everyone who contributed via Twitter.

So that was the day over and with my first unconference under my belt I turned my attention to the next one, or more specifically what went well, what could have made it even better and some action planning points.

Utilise online polling prior to the event. People appreciated being asked what they wanted to cover.

Limit the amount of topics to be covered. Too much content, too little time.

Return to the same venue – comments were made as to how relaxed and informal they felt throughout the day.

Have a second projector plugged in and on ‘stand by’ – the main projector surrendered mid-way through the afternoon.

Utilise a Twitter back channel, possible with a Twitterwall playing.

Change the screen size when using embedded YouTube videos in PPT 2010, to allow me to click forward onto the next slide.

As always these ‘physical’ activities provide me with a great opportunity to further cement friendships made online as well as to make new acquaintances.

I have been guilty when attending previous conferences and workshops of trying to absorb as much of the content as possible, only to find that when I return home that I have a mass of notes and scribbles that even when deciphered produce an almost insurmountable ‘to do’ list. So I decided to take a slightly different tack with this particular conference and that was to limit myself to 1-2 action planning points/quotes per session, this I hoped would allow me to stand a greater chance of transferring any learning back into my workplace.

So here we go…

The New Blended Learning – Clive Shepherd

Your chosen method(s) will maximise the effectiveness of the learning. Your chosen media(s) will maximise the efficiency of the learning.

The recent release of the Amazon Kindle within the UK has prompted me to look into the feasibility of this resource within my organisations learning activities. The relatively cheap tool (in comparison to the iPad and other e-Readers), coupled with its portability and reported ease of book downloading might well be of benefit to members of my organisation who are undertaking an ILM accredited Leadership qualification towards the end of 2010/beginning of 2011.

Previous ILM Leadership programme delegates have had the opportunity to utilise a number of conventional books that were purchased from the ILM ‘suggested reading’ list. Owing to the cost of such books, the challenges with storing them and the logistics of physically loaning the books to the delegates (not as easy as it sounds when you don’t have a dedicated library) led to some colleagues having to wait up to a month for their desired book to be returned; this problem was often exacerbated by late returns, L&D staff being unavailable to organise the loan and the usual challenges that go with working in a shift-orientated environment.

The Amazon Kindle may well be the solution to many of the above problems…….

The Kindle could be loaded with all or most of the books from the suggested reading list; alternatively it could be loaded with only those books that were required for the initial/next module, as a cost saving measure should anybody drop out.

The Kindle would be offered as a loan item to all delegates at the commencement of the programme.

Delegates would be able to access the suggested reading ‘any time’-‘any where’ due to the freedom provided by the lightweight, portable device. This would also negate additional resources in terms of arranging loans and returns.

As opposed to conventional books, delegates could annotate relevant text without worrying that they were tarnishing the books for future readers as the annotations could be wiped upon completion of the programme.

The storage of these devices would be far less than the storage of an equivalent number of individual conventional books.

Whilst this potential solution may seem like a no-brainer, there are a couple of issues that I feel may be stumbling points, which to date I have been unable to confirm or solve via any research.

As any purchases of these devices will be sourced centrally from my Purchasing Department, how do I go about registering multiple devices against an Amazon account that DID NOT purchase them?

Can a book be purchased in multiples and then downloaded onto multiple devices, or do I have to purchase and download the same item multiple times?

As it stands it seems like I will have quite a bit of time to research these questions as the massive demand for this e-Reader means that the single ‘test’ Kindle that we have ordered is not due for despatch until the middle of September 2010, so if you can shed any light on my questions above or know of any other advantages/disadvantages to using the Kindle as an Enterprise tool then please drop me a line.

Yet again Twitter has provided me with a CPD opportunity. The other day I spotted a re-tweet by Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) relating to an Open Course on Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge.

Now I believe that I have been operating within a PLE/N for approx 8 months now (since my attendance at the Learning Technologies Conference in Jan 2010), I had just never labelled it as such or realised what I was involved in. Steve Wheelers tweets during his ‘European Tour 2010’! brought my attention to the subject.

Subsequent research has revealed the subject to be a little ‘academic’ for my poor brain, so I have decided to enrol on the open course to discover a little more about the subject.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/08/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-personal-learning-environmentsnetworks/feed/0Happy Tweetiversary to me!http://tayloringit.com/2010/08/happy-tweetiversary-to-me/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/08/happy-tweetiversary-to-me/#commentsSat, 07 Aug 2010 18:29:39 +0000https://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=285I am typing this Blog from a hotel room in London where I am staying during my attendance at the Learning Technologies conference 2011; I tell you this because it is entirely relative to my Twitter history…..

I had heard of Twitter prior to attending LT10 but admit to having dismissed it as a celebrity ‘fad’, LT10 was the catalyst that I needed to pop my Twitter cherry!

So here I am 12 months later with approx 2500 tweets under my belt, 175 followers and following 92 other people. Everyone one of these people is in some way shape or form involved in L&D, Learning Technologies, Social Media or more usually all 3!

Twitter has enabled me to attend Jane Harts Masterclass on Using Social Media for Learning, James Clays Mobile Learning Boot Camp, the eLearning Network 2010 showcase (which subsequently led me to joining the eLN) It has provided me with some excellent contacts and some fantastic learning opportunities.

So if you haven’t yet set up a Twitter account then please don’t let this fantastic opportunity pass you by. If you don’t know how or where to start, then you could do a lot worse than checking out these resources which will help you on your way…

I had been hoping to gather a number of key stakeholders within my organisation to pitch to them in relation to the use of Social Media Technologies for both knowledge management and learning, however the first available date to gather them all together for the 2-3 hours that I needed was the 04th January 2011!!!

A great suggestion was made to me that I actually deliver some of my ‘pitch’ using the very media tools that I was hoping to gather support for in bringing to my organisation. The negative aspects of social media unfortunately grab the headlines more so than the positive effects, therefore it was my intention to bring to their attention the positive aspects of using Social Media Technologies. I was intending to use a wide-ranging number of tools including the very Blog you are reading now, You Tube, Twitter, Delicious, a ‘members only’ social-networking site and Facebook, however a number of those tools are blocked by our IT security policy so I was unable to fully demonstrate their effectiveness (I think they call that a vicious circle!) To begin with I intended to show them a short film entitled Social Media Revolution 2

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng]

I have recently seen Peter Butler (Head of Learning at BT) speak extremely passionately on their internal use of a Knowledge Management platform which they have christened ‘Dare2Share’. The footage below, shows a great examples of how a collaborative platform has benefited BT.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtVYkEdGtfo]

The image you can see below is actually a PowerPoint slideshow that I have inserted into a tool called ‘SlideShare’. This tool then allows me to embed the show inside a webpage, as you can see below. This slideshow is only 11 slides long and will go some way towards demonstrating the change in mindset in terms of using social media tools for learning that there is that there has been within the wider global population and the potential ‘disconnect’ that we may be guilty of causing amongst future employees.

During the above SlideShare I mentioned a social bookmarking site called ‘Delicious’ and promised visibility of my Delicious bookmark account, here it is, please feel free to click on any of the links and see what I have been researching. Imagine the power of this type of application within a Project Team who are all collaborating and undertaking research towards a common goal… The first two clips that I showed above were from YouTube, however as you could see these were created by other people/organisations. The clip below was created by me and uploaded to YouTube. I created this footage in order to update our e-learning authors on some pending changes to our e-learning authoring software. To type the update within an email would have been time-consuming (and probably quite boring to read!) however by talking to people in a ‘virtual’ manner, I believe it bridged the gap between numerous face-to-face meetings and a dry email – the feedback received by the recipients was very encouraging. Imagine that this footage was of a technician disconnecting ‘Valve A’ from ‘Pump B’… what a great Knowledge Management tool! Obviously the content shouldn’t sit in the public domain i.e. YouTube, but would need to be more secure. In essence our own organisations version of BTs Dare2Share model.

]]>http://tayloringit.com/2010/07/at-last-a-fruitful-meeting/feed/0I’m not alone… help is at handhttp://tayloringit.com/2010/07/im-not-alone-help-is-at-hand/
http://tayloringit.com/2010/07/im-not-alone-help-is-at-hand/#commentsSun, 25 Jul 2010 16:49:02 +0000https://craigtaylor1974.wordpress.com/?p=198

As a result of spending the last few weeks furiously catching up on James Clays ‘elearningstuff’ podcasts (I’m a late-comer to the party!) I have become aware of JISC and the RSCs around the UK.

Whilst technically being outside the criteria for formal RSC support as I work for neither a HE, FE or workbased learning provider, I do work for an organisation that delivers an INCREDIBLE amount of training.

So RSC NW have kindly agreed to provide me with some guidance and advice as to how I might approach a wider integration of learning technologies within my organisation.

I’m meeting up with them next week, so I’ll keep you updated as to how I get on…

A few days ago I posted my initial thoughts on facilitating an un-conference based around the theme of using technology to enhance learning. I was at that time a little dubious over the uptake of this, but the pieces seem to be falling into place…

… I’m really pleased to say that the support and interest over the last week has very encouraging, here’s how I did it.

Emailed all internal facilitators to invite them to the un-workshop, including details of the venue and the offer of a Flip Ultra camera being presented to a randomly selected participant on completion of the day (always helps!)

Those facilitators that responded positively were sent a link to a Poll Daddy survey asking for them to contribute their ideas and suggestion for the days content. I opted for Poll Daddy over the Survey Monkey licence that we possess, as I will ultimately want to ‘poll’ the attendees and I am unsure if Survey Monkey has that functionality (note to self; look into this functionality). Google Moderator required everybody to have a GMail account, so it was a non-starter.

I have also invited out IT team along, to allow them to see the direction that we are trying to take in terms of Learning Technologies. I am hoping that this will grease the wheels of progress in the future and may allow IT the opportunity to interact more closely with their customers.

Anyway, 6 days after sending out the initial email I have 9 confirmed attendances and 1 tentative, with a week still to go it is shaping up to be a great event.

Part of my role involves facilitating the Continuing Professional Development of a number of internal Learning Facilitators. I normally do this by facilitating some lunchtime-learning sessions, which to be quite honest receive a very poor response in relation to the number of facilitators we have on-site (part of this is due to operating a shift-pattern).

I’ve attended quite a few conferences and workshops this year and have gained a great deal from them, so I have hatched a cunning plan…

Book an offsite facility for a day with Wi-Fi access.

Invite all Learning Facilitators to attend.

Set up a Google Moderator series to allow attendees to choose some of the content for themselves.

Invite all delegates to facilitate their own sessions (depending on the number of submissions these could be voted upon)

Offer up a Flip Ultra camera (or something similar) in a prize draw to all attendees.

Encourage delegates to set up a Twitter account prior to the un-conference and provide the support for them in doing this.